‘Bulo’s Fave New Tunes: February, 2015
Two great months of music in a row featuring both quality and quantity. This month features an almost-certain end-of-the-year Top 10 song, and several worthy contenders:
This song was released in 1980 on a tiny California label, and has just been rereleased along with the album. I never heard it back then, and it’s great soul-gospel, so…
Chill:
This song GIVES me chills:
See ya next month.
Tags: Best New Music-Feb. 1015, El Somnambulo, Steve Tanzer Delaware
Oh Lord. I think you must be fucking with me. It gives me chills to think that there is an audience for some (most) of this stuff.
I despair for your generation, Jason. Where did we go wrong?
Oh El Som, Copper Canteen is simply awful. Don’t talk to me while I’m cleaning my gun?
I love you, Auntie Dem. But ‘Copper Canteen’, like all the songs on James McMurtry’s new album, feature characters who are not James McMurtry. I think he has his father’s (Larry McMurtry) storytelling gift, but he couches it in roots music rather than written fiction.
His view of rural America is not pastoral but, rather, as he says, ‘soaked in blood’. Guess that partly explains why he’s my kind of artist.
In the space of little over four minutes, he creates two flawed but sympathetic characters, in essence tells the story of their lives and their circumscribed future, describes why they stay together, and gives outsiders a glimpse of a certain type of rural life.
I love this song, and I really admire McMurtry’s art and craft. I think he’s one of our best.
BTW, here’s an interview w/McMurtry, mostly about that song:
http://www.americansongwriter.com/2015/03/james-mcmurtry/
Liked White Horse and Laura Marling, but not enough to buy. James McMurtry? I can brew that up at home, Dylan vocals and all. Bed On Fire by Butch Walker, pitch challenged vocals make me winch. Kristen Diable, interesting bits of the mid sixties in the backing track.
Bamboozer, if you can write a song that creates two distinct and empathetic characters, tells the story of their lives, places the story in a specific locale (northern Minnesota), and provides some acute insights into their marriage, all in about four minutes, I wanna book you at the Arden Gild Hall.
Hey, put something up here. I’m not kidding. Always keeping my ears open for new talent.