Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bad Liver and a Broken Heart, 16 May 2008
Hard drinking and even harder women, broken relationships and life on the road. 'Trouble in Mind' delivers on most of the traditional concerns of country music with a batch of literate songs that (the curse of Texan country this) may not be country enough or straightforward enough for mainstream country success, but too country for wider acceptance. Brad Jones, fresh from production duties with Over The Rhine and Josh Rouse, conjures a rich warm sound from the excellent band that includes veteran steel player Al Perkins and guitarists Will Kimborough and Pat Buchanan. 'Drunken Poet's Dream' opens the album with mandolin, fiddle and dirty guitar and a tale of wild living. Here and elsewhere the band never really rip it up, and live these up tempo numbers are likely to be less restrained. 'Girl Downtown' is one of those slightly corny good hearted country songs of young love (think Trisha Yearwood's 'She's in Love With the Boy') that will make you smile despite yourself. 'Beaumont' with its chattering percussion is a song of wistful regret for what might have been with fine guitar and dobro, 'Faulkner Street' is another hellraising good time song and 'Don't Let Me Fall' a cry of desperate desolation. Good stuff.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witty, arch and funny hard Texas country, 26 Dec 2008
Carll continues to make good on the deep Texas songwriting talent demonstrated on two previous albums. For this third release he moves onto the Lost Highway label, and picks up the considerable backing talents of Fats Kaplin, Darrell Scott, Will Kimbrough, and Dan Baird and others. Better yet, producer Brad Jones and engineer Mark Addison spend that instrumental firepower in support of Carll's vocals and his witty, incisive lyrics. While some may prefer the more primitive sound of his earlier albums, in retrospect they sound like demos for this more fully realized outing.
The restlessness of Steve Earle courses through Carll's narratives and keenly observed portraits, but so does the irascible spark of Charlie Robinson and the tongue-in-cheek pathos of rock musician Ben Vaughn. The latter's wit is mirrored in the story of love lost to salvation, "She Left Me for Jesus" and the performing musician's litany of horrors, "I Got a Gig." Carll's drawl collides with the freewheeling blues and nasal syllables of Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & #35" on "A Lover Like You," with the word `lover' drawn as if Tennessee Williams' Maggie the Cat sang ragged country blues. Carll stays sly, though his lyrics aren't always joking. "Don't Let Me Fall" pleads for forgiveness and support in the wake of moral failure, and his cover of Tom Waits' "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" is both petulant and preternaturally knowing. The rasp in Carll's voice can express resignation, dissipation, irreverence, cynicism and ire, but it always seems to be balanced with a wounded poet's optimism. The break-up of "It's a Shame" is mourned for the hope of what could have been rather than the loss, and Tom Waits' romantic Bowery sentiments are translated into rural images on "Beaumont."
The album's cover art reaches back to Merle Haggard's early Capitol albums, but Carll's not as inconsolably self-deprecating as The Hag, and the twangy mix of instruments covers more ground. There's plenty of fiddle and steel, but also baritone guitar, six-string electric leads, harmonium, banjo and mandolin, and it's all deftly woven into backings that are modern in reach but traditional in effect, practiced in their looseness and anchored by the emotional abrasion of Carll's voice. Fans of Van Zandt, Earle, Nelson, Kristofferson, Shaver, Waits, Bruce & Charlie Robison, and Chris Knight will find much to love here. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
agree good stuff with one gem, 13 Dec 2008
good stuff which as said will fall between the stools - like a good old boy on a saturday night - between being too and not County-Enough - to me the final song 'she left me for jesus' is so fine it justifies (for me at least) serious attention - a funny, well-written little gem
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
~ Ryan Bingham
~ The Felice Brothers
~ Hayes Carll
~ Bon Iver
~ Levon Helm
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home