Sunday, August 01, 2004

country music makes baby jesus cry

would nurturing a fondness for alt-country make me a bad person? critics always seem to cream their jeans for it. there's a stigma i've always perpetuated that country and offshoots thereof are personally off limits, but lately i've been coming acoss several bands of the genre i think i like, in addition to new albums from bands i already like that take on a sometimes-twangy sound. what i'm going to do is to spend this week exploring some different bands and see what happens. certainly no loretta lynn apotheosis though, even though she gets wet for michael moore.

another thing about critics - when they make their "best of..." lists (at the end of years or decades or whenever) it always seems like the bands they put on there are only there to make the list look obscure and complex and brooding so that those qualities transfer to the critics. i have a hard time believing that all critics actually think that the records they cite are that good, because i know for a fact some of them are complete crap (and my opinion is, of course, law).

album du jour: rilo kiley more adventurous

this is the album that actually got me thinking about the alt-country scene, if you listen to it you may understand why. great cd, good times.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Alt-country doesn't have to be all that "twangy," i guess. Check out The Decemberists if you haven't already. They are considered as such, though i have no idea why. I cant really understand how people classify that genre. I've seen explosions in the sky classified as alt-country for whatever reason...

Phillip said...

i would qualify the decemberists as more indie rock than anything alt-country-ish. i didn't care for them much at first but i do think they're growing on me.

i've had "summer teeth" from wilco in my collection forever but never appreciated it but i just listened to it again and it's really good. i have to check out their new one.