My POOP DISC-CLAIMER (disc-lamer?): Here’s the usual backwards-looking, retro-inspired list of the records that kept me entertained and engaged these past 12 months. Par for the POOP, there’s not a whole lot of modern, new-to-the-world invention here but it is the stuff that had no problem getting under my skin.
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1 – VARIOUS ARTISTS – My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall
Alice Randall was a Music Row songwriter. She is also a Harvard grad, a novelist and a historian. And black. She’s written many fairly typical, nondescript country hits since the late 80’s for artists who were all white. This collection “rescues” (her word) the black characters and experiences she had in mind when writing these songs, and in the hands of 11 contemporary black women, the songs become transformed. This record helps reclaim the black roots of country music in an entirely different way than “Cowboy Carter” does, with more subtlety and poignancy. This record was an accompaniment to her 2024 book My Black Country: A Journey through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future.
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2 – NICK LOWE – Indoor Safari
Nick is once again right in his comfort zone, singing with the wisdom that only a singer of a certain age can bring, all with the usual gleam, sparkle and sophisticated irony. Always the clever wordsmith, he might be the first singer/narrator in music to refer to himself as “a big galoot.” Most of these songs have been released over the last three years but the remixed or re-recorded versions bring a uniformity of sound that makes this play like an intended album. The cover-art correctly states “Powered by Los Straitjackets,” who put their stamp on each song in support of the galoot.
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3 – ROGER McGUINN and CHRIS HILLMAN with MARTY STUART & HIS FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES – Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Sweetheart of the Rodeo – Live
This Record Store Day release captures a stellar concert tribute to an important album. The real stars here just might be Marty Stuart and his amazing band who quietly help send the evening in many surprising directions. Marty and His Fabulous Superlatives proved that they just might be America’s greatest live band when I caught them at the Egg in Albany this past summer.
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4 – DAWN LANDES – The Liberated Woman’s Songbook
Landes is a rootsy, country-ish singer who drew inspiration to make this album from the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Apparently two years earlier she had stumbled upon a 1971 book in a thrift shop entitled “The Liberated Woman’s Songbook,” a collection of songs dealing with the struggles of women dating back to the 1830’s. Landes re-imagines eleven of these songs and chronicles how the life of women has changed over the last century . . . and how it hasn’t. The songs reflect some of the pain and struggle of history but there’s also lot of irony and more than a few knowing winks regarding where women stand today in the United States of Gorsuch.
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5 -RODRIGO Y GABRIELA – In Between Thoughts . . . A New World
Okay, this came out in 2023 but it’s just too good to ignore now that I’ve discovered it (and, anyway, I started POOP and I’ve made an executive decision to include it). I learned about this from watching their 2024 Austin City Limits appearance. After one song I was a bit confused by the new direction they were taking. By song two I started to get where they were going, and for the rest of the show I sat agog and amazed. This is an electric, sonic tour de force, and if you’re at all curious about it, I would seriously recommend starting with their 2024 ACL appearance. This bears no resemblance to their other records or maybe anyone else’s records, for that matter.
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6 – VARIOUS ARTISTS – Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty
Nobody doesn’t like Tom Petty. His guitar-driven music has always been right down the middle of the American highway, fueled in equal parts by sincerity, catchy songs and jangle. This collection by Nashville’s honor roll adds a little Main Street to the equation, bringing out a quality in the source material that was apparently there all along. Dolly’s version of “Southern Accent” is a good place to start.
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7- VARIOUS ARTISTS – Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin
I’ve always been peripherally aware of Jesse Malin (hell, I even saw him as an opening act once) but it took his medical emergency to call my attention to his music. This benefit tribute album, featuring a wide array of artists, stands well on its own and wound up sending me down the proverbial rabbit hole into Jesse’s rather deep catalog. Still down there.
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8- CORB LUND – El Viejo
Corb Lund is one clever songwriter. The Canadian, along with his band the Hurtin’ Albertans, has his own style of wry wordplay, describing himself as someone who “took graduate courses on the insides of bars and the outsides of horses.” Lund reflects on subjects like the downward path to becoming an awful person (“It takes practice to be this bad a man/I’m a prime example of just putting in the hours”), kicking a speed habit in a single-wide trailer (“folks like us, we couldn’t afford/Long vacations at the Betty Ford”), or being a victim of “herbal terrorism” after being given one too many edibles before a show. All of his albums are wonderful but this all-acoustic living room outing shows what a band can do when they are genuinely having fun.
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9 – SIERRA FERRELL – Trail of Flowers
Ferrell has a beautiful, understated voice and she uses it to color twelve songs, each very different from the other and all steeped in traditional Americana. She comes off sassy and shrewd and demonstrates that she is a force to be reckoned with.
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10 – LUCINDA WILLIAMS – Sings the Beatles from Abbey Road
Lucinda may have accomplished the impossible (or at least the improbable). She takes on the world’s best known catalog, songs that arguably did not need to be covered yet again, and tweaks them just enough to make them sound entirely new. No small feat. She also drops some of her occasionally annoying southern twang in service to the songs.
11 – THE MAVERICKS – Moon & Stars
The Latin-tinged, Tex-Mex, country-ska band adds Abbey Road-inspired to list of their hyphenates. A wonderful record.
12- GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINS – Woodland
The textures are a little more varied with other instruments and even strings floating in and out but Gilly and David, now billed as a true duo, still maintain their transcendent ‘othertimeliness. ’ Their music remains a genre unto itself.
13 – NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE – Dume
I generally prefer my Neil young, and one of my favorite Neil Young & Crazy Horse albums gets the expanded treatment here as many more tracks from the “Zuma” era and sessions are added to the collection. Nice to know there was more where this came from.
14 – JD McPHERSON – Nite Owls
It’s kind of amazing how many different ways JD McPherson can sound retro. The real mystery is how he manages to make his retro music sound so original.
15 – VA – Jem Records Celebrates Jagger & Richards
This is the fifth of Jem Records’ annual tribute albums, so far consisting of Jersey bands paying tribute to Townshend, Davies, Wilson, Lennon and now Jagger/Richards. I guess I’ve always considered the Rolling Stones to have been (or be) a great band more than I ever considered Mick and Keith to be great songwriters, and this selection of mostly earlier songs, played with just the right amount of revision, is more a paean to all five original members. BTW, I just mentioned Jem’s previous tributes in my order of preference with this one probably in the #4 slot.
16 – ROBYN HITCHCOCK – 1967: Vacations in the Past
ROBYN HITCHCOCK – Sings the Incredible String Band
There’s nothing all that tree-shaking about the 1967 album but it is a playful homage to a pretty consequential year in music (and the ‘soundtrack’ to his memoir of the same name). The Incredible String Band collection (available on YouTube) is the more interesting of the two as Robyn recreates the songs of his fellow musical fantasists.
17- CHUCK PROPHET with ¿Qiensave? – Wake the Dead
This is a cross-pollination of two things I knew nothing about–cumbia and the music of Chuck Prophet. Rabbit hole, here I come again.
18 – LINDA THOMPSON – Proxy Music
Linda Thompson has struggled with dysphonia, a throat condition that has sporadically left her unable to sing. Now that it has returned she’s decided to let her family and friends do the singing for her (note the album’s cheeky title and the clever Roxy Music cover art). Alternately poignant and funny, she reveals she learned a bit about songwriting from that Richard guy she used to hang with.