This Week's Album Releases
Reviewed by Fiona Sturges
Whiskeytown
Pneumonia
If you gave me a penny for all the albums that have been shelved in the midst of corporate rationalisations, I could've built my own recording empire by now.
Whiskeytown's story is depressingly familiar - their third album was recorded in a converted church in Woodstock in the spring of 1999 but its completion coincided with the Universal/Polygram merger, prompting the closure of the subsidiary label Outpost.
It took 18 months for the band to be released from their contract, by which time they had gone their separate ways. The singer Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary were both pursuing solo projects - Adams' solo debut Heartbreaker was released on the alt.country/roots label Bloodshot to universal acclaim last year. Still, such were the levels of anticipation surrounding Pneumonia that, prior to its release in the US, bootleg copies were changing hands for up to $100.
This is effectively their swan song then, one that perfectly illustrates their eclectic and uninhibited approach to music-making and will leave you mourning the fact that they are no more.
The core line-up of Adams, Cary and Mike Daley has been augmented with the producer Ethan Johns on drums alongside former Replacement bass player Tommy Stinson, Smashing Pumpkins? guitarist James Iha. The Album drifts through all manner of genres, from shimmering folk and alt.country through to scuzzy rock.
In the past Adams has been likened to Bob Dylan, a fearsome comparison that would normally kill a career stone dead. But when you listen to the opening track- a spectacularly spiky love song called "Ballad Of Carol Lynn" ("when you need someone who can let you win, you can count me out") - it doesn't seem so ridiculous.
Whiskeytown are the champions of understatement. There is a magical simplicity in the horns and acoustic guitars that drift quietly in the background in "Under Your Breath" or in the gentle purls of pedal steel in "Jacksonville Skyline" a truly devastating piece of country balladry.
It's not all doom and gloom, either. There is the comparatively upbeat "Don't Be Sad," which reveals an intimate Flaming Lips-style sense of wonder at the world, while "Don't Wanna Know Why" is the ultimate rootsy, round-the-campfire singalong number. "Mirror, Mirror" heralds a dramatic mood shift halfway through beginning with an audacious steal from Sgt. Pepper. "Paper Moon" is a joyous Hawaiian hoe-down with its smoochy strings, castanets and priceless lyrics: "Oh, rainy day don't bother me/I'm her baby-doll, she's my cup of tea." Way to go.
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