|
Like it says in the subtitle of the new No Depression,
the 96-page Seattle-based ex-fanzine with 33 pages of ads:
"We could always just call it The Alternative Country
Bimonthly." But then, as the previous subtitle wondered:
"How would you define alt-country?" Simple. Coming down
the middle of the mindset we have "alternative" as
reified by Nirvanamania: nowhere near as monolithically gloomy or
violent as was believed, yet still not futuristic enough for one
segment of its potential audience nor--pay attention
now--comfortable enough for another. In short,
"alt-country" is the obverse of the equally undefinable
"techno."
Since No Depression was named for the first Uncle Tupelo
album, it's reasonable to locate the middle of its mind-set
in Uncle Tupelo offshoots Son Volt, Wilco, and the Bottle Rockets.
But in fact those bands are on its left wing--somewhat popper
and/or tradder than such shoegazers with hollow-bodies as the Scud
Mountain Boys and Songs: Ohia, but well edgier than an enormous
alternative-music subculture that's been there all along.
Alt-country is strong from Minneapolis to Austin because
Midwestern life isn't all that multicultural or
concrete-and-steel--and because most white people there feel
organically connected to country tradition. As when Gram Parsons
led his flock out of the psychedelic wilderness or punk counted
roots-rock among its spawn, it helps increasingly unalienated
young adults make sense of their normality and cultural
inheritance.
Alt-country fetishizes not only the lo-tech cliche of human
scale, but history--or perhaps just the past, or nostalgia, or
sentimentality. Presaged by such prepunk indies as Rounder and
Alligator, heralded by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Lucinda Williams
and the Mekons, it has always been bar music and always will be.
That doesn't mean its stars forswear the auditorium, festival, or
arena, but that journeymen, up-and-comers, and local heroes will
surely take their places. It has special meaning for
thirtysomethings who've long found their music in bars and don't
want to stop now and twentysomethings who've recently started and
are determined to keep it up.
The better to empathize with this ethos, I've been listening to
a lot of alt-country in bars. On July 16, the Knitting Factory,
which normally cultivates a more cosmopolitan species of bar
music, hosted an Intel bill of Ghost Rockets, Songs: Ohia, slack
grunge-pop ringers Ditch Croaker, and the Volebeats. Three days
later I caught No Depression cover boys Whiskeytown at
Tramps. But the big event was July 17 at Wetlands, long the
rootsiest of NYC's alt venues: the so-called Ameripalooza
Festival, two floors of music from 7:30 till whenever. Arriving an
hour late, I checked out eight acts. Maybe I would also have liked
Dakotan-turned-Austinite Anna Egge at 7:30 ("a combination of
bluegrass, folk and Texas-style country that defies easy
categorization"--No Depression). Still, much of my
pleasure was anthropological. Lifestyles of the alt and country.
The oddest thing about this bar music is that--unlike the
houserockin' blues with which it would seem to share so much--it's
also song music, and the oddest thing about this song music is
that the words are often drowned out by a bar band, and the oddest
thing about the bar band is that it rarely rocks the house. For an
outsider, it's hard to connect without knowing the songs, but for
insiders the sound itself makes an excellent icebreaker. Rock
though it usually is, that sound is long on acoustics and
hollow-bodies, amped or merely miked; country-signifying fiddle
and pedal steel make their mournful noises, and I also encountered
mandolin, autoharp, accordion, stand-up bass. Where an ordinary
Gibson is untechnocratic enough to satisfy grunge-alt's craving
for the authentic, in country-alt more reassurance is required.
And while any music that provides this reassurance can feel like
home, that doesn't mean partisans think it's all equally good. I
was interested to note that some stuff I wished would fucking end
had character, even if it was character I didn't like.
You can completely ignore Five Chinese Brothers--and Bruce
Henderson, bouncing around the stage in a fit of Nashville-ready
Hi-NRG, and Mr. Henry, a standard alt band that marks or markets
its soulful intensity with pedal steel, and Tom Thiboux, whose
"Total Stranger" was supposed to be about
"obsession" and barely got to mild concern. But I
reserved some admiration for Songs: Ohia, a folkish trio in which
serious, soccer-shirted young Jason Molina evinced a weedy passion
for archaic abstractions: "I have been too constant/And you
were this thing also," or "You should know passion comes
from a passing word" (what, like "Cute soccer
shirt"?). And for the Scud Mountain Boys, an all too
hollow-bodied quartet in which Joe Pernice stood there hunched,
his head tilted and his eyes closed as he purveyed an exceedingly
thoughtful variation on the soulful intensity that's been a pop
staple since long before soul knew its name--except that when I
strained to make out the lyrics, I was piqued by that ghost who
got beat up under the bridge, if not Pernice's theories of
television. And for multi-instrumentalist Stephan Smith, whose
pretensions irked me at a Michael Hurley show once, but whose
white-cover EP and sparsely attended performance--which was so
brutally outdecibeled by the Five Chinese Brothers upstairs that
he gave up and took to hawking and hand-decorating EPs--is
animated by the pitch of belief that makes folkies signify and has
some good songs on it besides.
If alt-country's downside is no worse than any other, though,
its upside--with all respect to Williams and Gilmore and the
Mekons and the Bottle Rockets, the only band in the movement whose
vision of normality gathers notable social detail--usually has too
low a ceiling. It would be narrow to deny yourself its pleasures,
even narrower to limit yourself to them. Like any song music--only
worse, because the music's comfort swallows its excitement--it
demands not just a level of craft most reformed slackers can't
approach, but a singer to put the craft across. Geffen's
Whiskeytown are cover boys because Ryan Adams is the kind of
fungibly catchy sumbitch cottoned to by talent scouts weary of
next-big-thingism. But the "swagger and charisma" and
"acid-tipped pen" hypesters discern are pro forma
insofar as they're there at all, and while Adams's voice reminds
me vaguely of Gram Parsons too, that's because no one can recall
what the pop-friendly Parsons epigone he really resembles sounded
like. I got a much sharper buzz off Safe House's Volebeats, whose
songs are no keener or crookeder but whose three lead singers
stropped up a collective edge--with plump young Jeff Oakes
inhabiting a gorgeous high baritone that seemed classic yet
resembled no one.
Yet in the end I had more fun with Philadelphia's sillier Lazy
Stars, led by a barefoot goof named Johnny Kaplan who painted his
left big toenail red and said "cigarayut" and covered
"Wasn't Born To Follow" and soon followed with "a
new one we like a lot" called "I Will Not
Follow"--almost a Byrds/Burritos/New Riders homage, only
never hamstrung by reverence. His barefoot African American keyb
player was a relief as well, the only black musician I saw all
week; Whiskeytown's fiddler was the only woman. And then there was
the big thrill.
It took forever for Y'All's mandolin-steel-snare-bass to get
ready downstairs at Wetlands. Yet once they did they had a
surprise for us--out of the shadows bounded a skinny little guy
who looked like a smalltown newspaper editor and big guy sporting
a shaved skull and a spangled gingham dress. On their rip-snorting
opener, the June Carter-Johnny Cash chestnut "Jackson,"
the guy in the dress took Johnny's part in a mellifluous
bass-baritone. After identifying their hometowns as Okeydokey,
Texas, and Cornflake, Illinois, these two sang the straightest
love songs this side of Garth Brooks, one about the editor's
sister and family, the other about and to each other and climaxing
when they blew each other's kazoos. Although the CD I bought
doesn't put it across, they were campy and musical and great.
Their slogan is "Country music for the twenty-first
century."
It isn't, of course. But if a fella can dream, two can dream
twice as much.
Village Voice, Aug. 5, 1997
|