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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Having watched him throw away the prime years of his career on smack and prison, Steve Earle fans were reassured by the singer's 1995 comeback, Train A Comin', where he reclaimed the past in exquisite acoustic arrangements. They were further encouraged by the 1996 follow up, I Feel Alright, which staked out the present with rock & roll defiance. Their patient faith was rewarded with El Corazon, an album that no longer looks back at those lost years but looks forward to the rest of Earle's career. Combining the sheer beauty of Train A Comin' with the bristling energy of I Feel Alright, El Corazon ploughs new ground with Earle's most explicitly political song yet, his furthest leap into another character's voice, a hard-core bluegrass number with the Del McCoury Band, and a hard-core grunge rocker with the Supersuckers. Earle turns the Fairfield Four into the Jordanaires behind his Elvis vocal on "Telephone Road", and he imitates Townes Van Zandt's austere minimalism even as he sings an elegy to his late mentor on "Fort Worth Blues". All in all, these dozen tunes are the best songwriting Earle has produced since his 1986 breakthrough, Guitar Town, and he sings them with the take-it-or-leave-it authority of someone who has nothing left to prove. On the album's first and best song, "Christmas in Washington", he offers a mournful prayer to Woody Guthrie to come back and rescue us from an era of wishy-washy Democrats and ruthless Republicans; Earle sings it as if his prayer had been answered and the Okie troubadour's ghost had found a home in his belly. --Geoffrey Himes
Product Description
Potent 1997 album from the US journeyman! Includes his moving tribute to Townes Van Zandt "Ft. Worth Blues".
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
If you are a fan of Steve Earle then picking the best Steve Earle album is an almost impossibly difficult task but if this is not his best work then it is very, very close to it. Earle is a remarkable musician; although his roots are in country music his leftwing politics and strong influences from outside country music enable him to transcend the genre. This album, his third studio album after his incarceration and recovery from drug addiction, is a wonderful blend of rock, country, bluegrass and grunge held together by fierce revolutionary spirit.
The first and, I think, best song on the album is 'Christmas in Washington' which expresses his disillusionment with US politics as he calls on Woodie Guthrie to come back to us. The rest of the album is very good as well. It ends on another high-note (although a quiet minimalist one) - Fort Worth Blues a tribute to his mentor, the great Townes Van Zandt. In between there is, amongst other good tracks: Earle's experiment with grunge, NYC with the Supersuckers; a bluegrass tracks, I Still Carry You Around, in collaboration the Del McCoury Band; Taneytown, another example of his talent for storytelling through song enhanced by the supporting vocals of the incomparable Emmylou Harris.
Absolutely fantastic (even if you don't really like country music).
A final note: if you are interested in finding out more about Steve Earle then I recommend his biography Hardcore Troubadour written by Lauren St John. Note that Earle has led a turbulent life and his life story is often tragic - it is an interesting book but it is not always an easy read.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Certainly the best album since Earle's return from obscurity, and possibly his best ever. There's a fine mix of styles, taking the best of the country and rock genres, without tending to mawkishness or yobbery, as he occasionally did before, and a couple of his trademark story-songs. One of those records that keeps leaping out of the CD shelf and into the player.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
that steve earle can write and sing in several idioms is amply demontrated on "el corazon". from the angry ,passionate "taneytown" to the acheing, elegic "fort worth blues" earle demands an emotionel response from the listener. add to this superb arrangements and musitianship and you have perhaps his finest album. if this doesn't move you there's a lump of granite where your heart should be
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
El Corazon Is A Goodie
I like Steve Earle and have recently purchased some of his back catalogue, El Corazon being one of them. Read more
Published 17 days ago by albo2000
One of the all time classic albums
If you love music then get your ears around this. It's as simple as that. If you don't own this then you don't love music. It's the album that I could listen to again and again. Read more
Published on 17 May 2007 by Gordon Sharpe
COME ON.... COME ON.... LETS GO
Journeyman Steve Earle captures many moods, by using starkly different musical styles, as he wends his way through these twelve numbers on ‘El Corazon’. Read more
Published on 10 Mar 2003 by Mr. Richard J. Carter
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