With the appropriately titled TOWNES, Steve Earle pays tribute to his mentor, the late singer/songwriter legend Townes Van Zandt. Like Earle, Van Zandt was a Texan who made his way to Nashville even though his music didn’t fit the mainstream country mold. Earle, who learned a lot from Van Zandt, honors his hero’s mix of country, folk, and poetic lyricism with an affectionate trip through the Van Zandt songbook. Whether he’s tackling a dark, moody tune like “Marie,” a post-Dylan flight of lyrical fancy like “Lungs,” or a trad-tinged country song like “White Freightliner Blues,” Earle brings just the right mix of reverence and renegade fire to the table.

AMERICAN BEAUTY was an instant classic when it was first released November of 1970. It is among the most satisfying and enduring of the Grateful Dead’s studio recordings, expanding as it does on the engaging mix of country, blues, and folk materials they first coined earlier in the year with WORKINGMAN’S DEAD.
The musical vision of the Dead is more sharply focused on AMERICAN BEAUTY–from the serene reflection and compassion of the opening “Box Of Rain” and the earthy mysticism of “Ripple,” to the sensual rock of “Sugar Magnolia” and the anthemic proto-boogie of the closing “Truckin’.” But then, every tune on AMERICAN BEAUTY has attained a classic resonance, both from decades of steady airplay, and the way the Dead seemed to continually revive these popular standards for their concert repertoire.
Also available with WORKINGMAN’S DEAD on one cassette.

Given the extraordinary amount of airplay HOTEL CALIFORNIA garnered in the mid-70s and early ’80s, it comes as quite a surprise to hear how fresh this recording sounds on DCC’s 24k gold disc version. Familiar tracks benefit from the enhanced soundstage and control room-clarity of this exceptional digital remastering, revealing something of the actual recording studio room sound on many tracks.
A steady growth suddenly mushroomed into a monster as the Eagles, along with Fleetwood Mac, epitomized AOR in the early 70s. This record is supposedly a concept album but most of the purchasers merely enjoyed the accessible songs while driving down to the coast in their Volkswagen Caravanettes with 2.4 children. Joe Walsh was added to give gutsy guitar in the wake of the country flavour of Bernie Leaden, while Randy Meisner grew in stature as a writer with ‘Try And Love Again’ and ‘New Kid In Town’. The title track still bites as Henley’s voice blends with Walsh’s epic solo.

WATERSHED is the first album K.D. Lang has ever produced by herself, and as such, it sounds like a culmination of nearly every sound the Canadian singer-songwriter has ever explored in her career, save the manic rockabilly cowpunk of her debut album, 1987’s ANGEL WITH A LARIAT. The lush, torchy feel of 1992’s INGENUE and the jazzier direction of her later albums are the most obvious touchstones for the warmth and intimacy of WATERSHED, with the wistful opener “I Dream of Spring” and the cocktail lounge balladry of “Sunday” the most obvious standouts in that category.

Elsewhere, the country-tinged sway of the harmony-heavy “Flame of the Uninspired” and the semi-rustic banjo-led folk of “Jealous Dog” recall the sound of SHADOWLAND and ABSOLUTE TORCH AND TWANG, while the gentle Brazilian pulse of “Upstream” and the minimalist electronics of “Shadow and the Frame” point towards new areas of exploration. One of Lang’s finest and most self-assured records, WATERSHED is an essential listen.

Displaying a remarkable consistency of vision, Gillian Welch sticks to her guns on her third album, by limiting the sonic palette to the twin acoustic guitars and vocals of herself and partner David Rawlings (and a touch of banjo). With all the hip cred she’s built up, especially with her work on the O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU soundtrack, this might have been her big pop move, but Welch plays it admirably straight on TIME (THE REVELATOR). While the melodies and lyrics here do occasionally stretch the boundaries of her willfully anachronistic folk/country style a little, this an even moodier, more intense recording than Welch’s previous two. There’s a hazy, dreamlike feel to “Revelator,” “Dear Someone,” and especially the 14-minute, Dylanesque closer “I Dream a Highway,” somewhat akin to the plaints of Lucinda Williams’s contemporaneous ESSENCE album. Brief respites from all the serious brow-knitting are provided by the ironic, recorded-live “I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll” and the straight-up homage “Elvis Presley Blues,” but ultimately this is a dark, murky (and rewarding) trip.

So Runs the World Away, the fifth studio album from bookish, Idaho-born troubadour Josh Ritter, unfolds like a Flannery O’Connor, Jim Jarmusch, and Mark Twain road trip. Equally steeped in Southern and Midwest Gothic Americana, the son of a pair of neuroscientists has crafted his most unique collection of songs to date, borrowing characters from mythology, literature, and world history and letting them run wild in the increasingly adventurous, neo-traditional folk style that his become his forte over the last decade. The elegiac, slow-burn opener “Change of Time” sets the stage, lamenting “battered hulls and broken hardships/leviathan and lonely” before visiting a 1000-year-old Egyptian pharaoh on the deck of a steamship on his way to New York in “Curses.” The voyage continues by train on “Southern Pacifica,” descends into bluesy, Tom Waits-ian solipsism on “Rattling Locks,” and culminates in So Runs the World Away’s brilliant mid-album centerpiece, “Folk Bloodbath,” which pits some of the murder ballad’s biggest names (Louis Collins, Delia, and Stagger Lee) against each other with predictable results. Standout cuts in the second half include the verdant, bouncy “Lark,” the stoic, John Jacob Niles-inspired “See How Man Was Made,” and the spirited, quasi-spiritual/science rocker “Orbital,” resulting in a typically fine batch of new folk standards and a high-water mark for an artist already used to paddling around on oceans too deep and vast for modern cartography. ~ James Christopher Monger

Over the clatter of piano and strum of an electric guitar that opens his fourth studio album, Josh Ritter leaps into rapid-fire lyrics that reference Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and Florence Nightingale, all of whom seem to be struck together in the belly of a whale. As the follow-up to last year’s critically acclaimed album The Animal Years, The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter is his most adventurous, fresh, and freewheeling work to date.

Only three years passed between the Stones’ debut and this follow-up record, but the siblings seem to have aged exponentially in the interim. While 2007’s A Book Like This found the two setting their own adolescence to a soundtrack of acoustic guitars and sparse percussion, Down the Way is a decidedly adult album, filled with textured arrangements and a wider array of influences. Angus and Julia handle their own production this time around, and the resulting songs jump from panoramic chamber pop — often with a rootsy, Americana edge — to bedroom folk songs, with both members trading off vocals and instrumental duties. Julia still sings in a soft, fairy tale voice, but her own songs are bolder than they once were, with tracks like “Hold On” taking much of their strength from the contrast between her gauzy, childlike croon and the nocturnal-sounding instruments that surround it. Even so, brother Angus gets the “most improved” award, having moved past the solo folk songs he favored on A Book Like This (although some of those show up here, too) in favor of lush, collaborative material. On “Draw Your Swords,” one of the album’s three tunes to stretch past six minutes, he rips into the final refrain with gusto, shouting the lyrics in a cracked baritone before adopting a Jeff Buckley-ish falsetto. Andrew Leahey.

“Few singers command such perfection of pitch. Her voice, at once beautiful and unadorned and softened with a veil of smoke, invariably hits the middle of a note and remains there.”
—New York Times

“The best singer of her generation”
—Tony Bennett

Four-time Grammy Award–winner and eight-time Juno Award–winner k.d. lang releases her first-ever career retrospective, Recollection, 25 years after the release of her debut recording.

This two-disc set features 22 of lang’s most beloved recordings including an all-new interpretation of the Leonard Cohen classic “Hallelujah,” which has become a moving highlight of her live performances.

Recollection comes on the heels of lang’s critically acclaimed 2008 release, Watershed, hailed by Rolling Stone as “first-rate singer-songwriter music” and Interview Magazine as “[lang’s] biggest album yet.” The record debuted in Billboard’s top ten upon its release and marked lang’s first time assuming the role of producer in addition to writer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist.

Featuring a new lineup, an open-ended definition of Americana, and the backing of a major label, Band of Horses’ third album is a game changer. What began as a partnership between Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke has since blossomed into a five-piece band, with Bridwell serving as the only link between the group’s 2006 debut, Everything All the Time, and the present. It’s only natural, then, that Infinite Arms sounds wholly different from the albums that came before it, both of which mixed guitar-driven rock with dusty, jangled folk. There’s still plenty of folk to be found here, and Band of Horses bang their way through “Compliments” as a concession to their rock fans. Infinite Arms is a borderline pop album, though, dressed up in flannel and facial hair to disguise the fact that these melodies are, with few exceptions, the sweetest of the group’s career. There are harmonies galore, simple fifths and thick, Sacred Harp-type chords that beef up Bridwell’s vocals while drawing parallels to Fleet Foxes and the Beach Boys. At times, it’s hard to separate Band of Horses from such influences; “Blue Beard,” although downright gorgeous, cops its verse from Smile-era Brian Wilson and its bridge from the Starland Vocal Band, and “Older” is the country-rock single Gram Parsons never wrote. But the album’s willingness to sample from so many different genres — roots, soft rock, alt.country, power pop, indie folk — makes it sound like nothing else in 2010, and Band of Horses connect the dots by layering everything with canyon-worthy reverb and cinematic guitars. For those who let it sink in, Infinite Arms could be a contender for the year’s best summer album, not to mention the band’s most cohesive album to date.

Tracklisting
1. Factory
2. Compliments
3. Laredo
4. Blue Beard
5. On My Way Back Home
6. Infinite Arms
7. Dilly
8. Evening Kitchen
9. Older
10. For Annabelle
11. Nw Apt.
12. Neighbor

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (p.68) – 3.5 stars out of 5 — “Suddenly, the band has blossomed into something more like the Band, with rich harmonies — even when Bridwell just multitracks his own voice — and fuller arrangements.”

Billboard (p.59) – “[T]he stomping rhythm and mammoth chorus of first single ‘Compliments’ make it the most flat-out enjoyable track the band has ever recorded.”

Mojo (Publisher) (p.92) – 3 stars out of 5 — “They’re aspiring to lofty melodic standards, and on the lilting sing-along ‘Older’ and the earthy lo-fi contemplation of ‘Evening Kitchen’ they achieve them in timeless fashion.”

Uncut (magazine) (p.93) – 4 stars out of 5 — “[W]hile it sees Ben Bridwell leaving his lo-fi past behind, INFINITE ARMS is a neoclassic landmark that you’ll need to get on vinyl.”