…when ninety-nine and a half won’t do.
Live From Alabama
This is what a live record should be. This is a
definitive look at a band at the top of their game. A moment in 4/4 time that
combines where they are with where they came from, along with a hint as to
where they’re going. Isbell writes
potent songs that mix rock, country and soulful blues and here, he blends songs
from his time with the Drive-By Truckers, more recent work, and two covers
(Muscle Shoals soul singer Candi Staton’s Love
On a String and a powerful take on Neil Young’s Like A Hurricane).
Picks: Decoration
Day, Alabama Pines.
We’re Usually A
Lot Better Than This
The title’s an inside joke, an offhand comment. But no
one could be better than Darrell Scott and Tim O’Brien, two of the most
respected and accomplished multi-instrumentalists in Nashville, sitting down in
a live environment to play acoustic music together. The thirteen tracks, culled
from two benefits in 2005 and 2006, feature originals and covers by Gordon
Lightfoot, Hank Williams, Keith Whitley and Townes Van Zandt, and are filled
with jaw-dropping, virtuoso picking and airtight harmonies. And I thought they
couldn’t be any better than 2000s Real
Time.
Picks: Scott’s Long Time Gone
and Van Zandt’s White Freightliner Blues.
Curtis Lynch
December 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment