Steve EarleWashington Square Serenade | NewWest  October 15,
2007 5:33:33 PM
|
This is Steve Earle’s big hug to his new home town, New York City, and his new wife (his seventh), country singer Allison Moorer, who repays the favor with frequent harmony vocals. There’s an urban-informed edge to much of the disc — Earle and producer John King, of the Dust Brothers, built the tracks atop beats, hip-hop style — but it’s also his least electric album in some years. In the opening “Tennessee Blues,” Earle bids goodbye to Nashville, and he quickly follows up with “Down Here Below,” singing the praises of a locally renowned Central Park hawk who’s “got him a penthouse view from the tip-top of the food chain.” The American political malaise is still very much on his mind, however. In “Steve’s Hammer,” a rousing folk-rocker dedicated to Pete Seeger, he promises that he won’t stop speaking out till “the air don’t choke and the ocean’s clean and the kids don’t die for gasoline.” And “City of Immigrants,” which features the Brazilian band Forro in the Dark, celebrates diversity with an appropriately Latin-esque sway.
|
 |
|
- Inside the prize-filled trophy home of a seemingly obsessive-compulsive contest enterer
- A do-gooder who recorded abusive Boston police officers was himself arrested under a controversial ‘wiretapping’ law
- That intoxicating smell, the siren-call sizzle — looks like pop culture has gone hog wild
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- We already know about politicians’ capacity for coarse behavior. But how low can the press go?
- Body modification as art at the Peabody Essex Museum
- That intoxicating smell, the siren-call sizzle — looks like pop culture has gone hog wild
- Is there one political story the press shouldn’t report?
- Dutoit and Elder at the BSO, Collage’s Berio, Boston Conservatory’s Turn of the Screw, and Kurt Weill at the Gardner and the MFA
- Body modification as art at the Peabody Essex Museum
- The right of a performance artist represents the rights of all Americans. Plus, an opportunity with Cuba.
- We already know about politicians’ capacity for coarse behavior. But how low can the press go?
|
-
Yep Roc
-
Cotton Eyed Joe | Delmore: 2CDs, 1 DVD
-
Last of the Breed | A+E
-
Rhino
-
Eagle Eye
-
Archives Vol. 1 | Amoeba
-
Trav'lin Light | Verve
-
The year ahead in DVDs
-
Rounder
-
The ‘Jazz Icons’ DVDs
|
- No Arms | Self-released
- Super Gangster (Extraordinary Gentleman) | Koch
- Flock | Yep Roc
- Line in the Sand | SideOneDummy
- District Line | Anti-
- Holon | ECM
- Outside of Portland, a Battle Within rages
- Reba Duets | MCA
- Dirt Farmer | Vanguard
- Dununya | Jumbie
|
|
|
|