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May
1998 | Country Music
Try
as I might, I despair of the alt. country "No Depression" school of singer-songwriters
and bands expanding beyond cult status to become a major force. I share
my colleague Patrick Carr's hopes, given the reality that a running-on-empty
Music Row so bankrupt of new ideas they've been reduced to running the
old ones on a tape. The question is , what alt.acts can reach the masses?
How many are self-centered singer/writers and sloppy bands preaching to
the converted lacking the sense of tradition that every major revolutionary
artist in country music has always maintained? Too many alt. artists and
fans alike seem clueless about the music beyond the most obvious icons(Patsy,
Hank,etc.) That won't work if this music's to catch on. But if I had to
pick one act that could break through, it's Mike Ireland and his trio,
Holler. Vocally easygoing and natural, their mix of traditional and cutting-edge
individuality, with its fresh, sleek feel, sets him and the band apart
and could attract mainstream fans without compromise. Sure, their flair
for integrating new ideas into classic formats may be quirky, but it always
succeeds. Consider the string quartet on three numbers. On the surface,
it's hardly a departure since a lot of strings on Nashville Sound records
were nothing more than string quartets. The difference is in the way Ireland
and company utilizes them, particularly on the spooky, desolate opening
track, "House of Secrets." As he sings of a man fixing to torch an abandoned
home awash in bad memories, the strings are as much a rhythmic foil for
his voice as the guitars. On the unadorned honky-tonker, "Worst of All,"
and the title number, Ireland, like his hero, Billy Sherrill, uses strings
the way Sherrill used them when he was producing George Jones for Epic.
The raw-rocking feel of "Headed for a Fall" mixed with Dan Mesh's low-string
boogie guitars surrounding Ireland's vocal (with Slim Whitman falsetto),
as well as the ballads, "Don't Call This Love," "Cold, Cold Comfort" and
"Biggest Torch in Town," all reflect decidedly unslick music. So does
his jaunty, rocking spin on the traditional murder ballad, "Banks of the
Ohio." Continuing that sense of tradition is Ireland's own evocative "Graveyard
Song," a ballad The Carter Family might have recorded 70 years ago, mixing
loss of love with awareness of mortality. "Some Things You Lose" has the
sharp imagery of the best alt. material. Ireland's Christmas number,"Christmas
Past" reflects true, depressing holiday melancholy, obliterating the kinds
of generic holiday songs Nashville song factories provide to fill most
stars' Xmas albums. Ireland's willingness to ignore boundaries also succeeds,
proven by his ingenious cover of hyper-emotional pop balladeer Johnie
Ray's 1952 pop smash,"Cry," a song few, if any, mainstream country singers
would ever think to cover despite its versatile message. The fact that
Learning How to Live appears on the small Seattle-based Sub Pop label,
and was recorded in L.A. ought to make it clear no one busted their hump
to grab the mainstream crowd.The fact that this literally perfect record
could grab a broader audience doesn't mean that it will. Still, the fact
remains that it could, and that's good enough for me.
June
1998 | Journal of Country Music
Learning
How to Live is the Best Revenge
If the past is as dead as contemporary country radio would have us believe,
then thirty years is just a shallow grave. But Mike Ireland dug down that
far and unearthed a sound to match his own emotional state, and Learning
How to Live(Sub Pop) is a lesson in using the past to forge a future.
Which surprises me some, Ireland comes from the nebulous world of alternative
country, which anymore seems like a place ill-suited to the development
of potent country singers. Many alternative country acts are paralyzed
by their reverence for the past, others pay it mere lip service. But both
camps display little regard or understanding of the blatantly commercial
forces that have shaped the music. They stand on the cusp of tomorrow
unwilling to do much more than cock a sneer Nashville's way. Now Ireland,
who played bass in the country-rock outfit the Starkweathers, has risked
a gaze into his own heart, and that simple act of maturation has resulted
in twelve lean country songs, a concept album about the loss of love,
a quiet manifesto for a subgenre. See, since the Starkweathers' lead singer
wasn't too good at singing country, he apparently decided to live it and
sparked up an affair with Ireland's wife. And Ireland, who had quit his
job to devote more time to the band, pretty much found himself holding
the bag in a wicked snipe hunt. He's made no bones about any of this in
interviews, and more importantly holds nothing back in his writing and
singing. Having sloughed off any of the machismo that often builds up
around young men in rock bands, he doesn't care if we see him cry. With
that emotional freedom, he can concentrate on the craft of writing songs
that , in structure and intent, are pure country. Mind you, Ireland and
his band Holler, are still alt.country. Holler's basic rock line-up of
two guitars,drums,and Ireland on bass, plus the singer's thin voice ,
attest to that. But they're one of the few acts out there using the freedom
of being "alternative" (i.e. there's no chance in hell of making any real
money out of this)to do something downright punk. Unlike the Ramones,
what they've stripped for contemporary approximation isn't Phil Spector
dance tunes or '60s garage classics, but the swooping ache of '60s and
'70s countrypolitan. The Southern Gothic stance of "House of Secrets"
finds Ireland singing about the torching the house he shared with his
ex-wife while the string section(yes, there's a string section) references
Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe." "Worst of All" is a cheating song
that disregards clues like "a number written under a matchbook cover,"
a clue that always screamed like a car alarm to old adultery hands like
Mel Street and Vern Gosdin. No, "worst of all is how you act like you
still love me," a bald statement as chilling as a scene from Invasion
of the Body Snatchers. It's as if Ireland has sprung from a pod himself,
an alternative rock scenester now indistinguishable from a hard country
stylist. Risking sentimentality, he strikes truth, and some of the heavier
aspects of country music serve him well, establishing a context in which
tears are an expected response to a world of busted-knuckle woe. The little
melody Ireland taps out on glockenspiel evokes the loneliness of the holidays
in "Christmas Past." He pulls off a murder ballad, Bill Fold's "Banks
of the Ohio," reciting the verses in high-dramatic mode, and nails an
exactly right rendition of Johnnie Ray's old tearjerker "Cry." Even his
record company got it right. Sup Pop, the Seattle-based label that introduced
the world to Nirvana, commissioned a stark album design that recalls the
day when albums didn't much matter. The fossil-faced young man leaning
from the shadow could be some young singer a generation removed, Lynn
Anderson maybe, leaning from the shade of mountain music and cowboy songs
into the bright pop world of the major AM powerhouses, where the shimmering
singles by the likes of Dionne Warwick, the Association, and Gary Puckett
and the Union Gap bounced off the nighttime's low-slung sky. The Nashville
Sound might be simply put as the sound of strings exhaled from the bony
lungs of honky-tonk, country music's blatant bid for the mainstream. In
adopting a pop style decades old, Ireland is hardly going for that , and
indeed, not everything on this album could be called countrypolitan. "Graveyard
Song," is pure, beautiful folk, and the rockability-flavored "Headed for
a Fall" is a revamped Starkweathers'tune. But what Ireland has done is
refuse to mock, refuse to blame the music business for his personal problems,
refuse to mistake a few giddy riffs for timeless music. Standing in the
ashes of a burnt marriage-his band abruptly disassembled , jobless and
homeless, even -perhaps Mike Ireland finally understood country music.
In Learning How to Live he embraces it as firmly as Paul took to Christ,
and punks and hat acts alike should listen closely as Ireland soars away
on its final, title cut. This is music that needed to be made, and what
a rare thing that is.
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