The Guardian (London), December 8, 2000

Twang 'em high: Gems in the Nashville Swamp
Country CD Round Up
By Adam Sweeting

Thanks to the likes of Reba McEntire, George Strait and the color-coordinated nincompoop Garth Brooks, country music reached an unprecedented peak of popularity in the early 1990s (in the US, at any rate). However, times have changed, and now sales are falling. "Everyone in this town is being challenged to start taking chances and stop sucking up to radio and the status quo," warned a recent editorial in the Nashville trade paper, Music Row. "Give the fans something that engages them. Our jobs depend on it."

The Nashville companies have achieved their recent successes more by fluke than by skilful talent spotting. This year has seen more than its fair share of typical airbrushed Nashville piffle, with its production-line crooners and vacuum-molded clones of Shania Twain. I could mention singing supermodel Terri Clark and her album Fearless (Mercury, **), on which, despite Terri's desperate attempts to achieve the perfect rockin' cowgirl pout from inside her black leather suit, the music is a dispiriting mixture of "sensitive" girlie ballads and sleek country cliches. There also seems to be little hope for Reba McEntire, who has lapsed into characterless middle-of-the-road slop in her recent album I'll Be (MCA, *), a disc so determined to blend in with the soft furnishings that it should be dragged outside and shot for sheer spinelessness.

By contrast, Alan Jackson couldn't be anything but country, and his album When Somebody Loves You (MCA, **) is awash with flag-waving hymns to the glories of the American south. But although he claims "It's all right to be a redneck," you'd imagine his white Stetson, curly blond hair and matching moustache could land him in trouble in some of the rougher honky-tonks. As for Billy Ray Cyrus, perpetrator of the wretched Southern Rain (Epic/Monument, *), his bellowing stadium-country belongs in a mausoleum.

I thought of being nice about Sara Evans's Born to Fly (Grapevine/BMG, **), but another listen to its blow-dried Nashville orthodoxy, and a glance at the sleeve depicting the artiste in a variety of absurd stylist's postures, made me think again.

Perhaps we can make an exception for George Strait, who is about as pretentious as a plate of pork and beans, and his album George Strait (MCA, ***). With the wind in the right direction, you can almost kid yourself you're listening to the great George Jones.

But there's no shortage of excellent songwriters making albums that country buffs would love if they ever got to hear them. Interestingly, many of them are coming out of Texas, like Terri Hendrix, whose Places in Between (Continental Song City, *****) could end up being my favorite album of the year if it isn't careful. Ms Hendrix writes infectious tunes and, with an expert band, performs them in a spread of styles from cow-town funkiness with horns to traditional Irish balladry. Then she equips them with crafty, deadpan lyrics, like "My Own Place," or the title track. Especially brilliant is "Invisible Girl," in which the narrator finds herself a spectator in her own life.

Hendrix sometimes writes with her producer, Lloyd Maines, and he crops up again as the guiding hand behind the Hot Club of Cowtown. As a quick spin of their album Dev'lish Mary (Hightone Records, ****) reveals, the Hot Club have seized upon aspects of Django Reinhardt but have bolted on some distinctive features from Texas, such as western swing, jump blues and some rude blasts of Tex-Mex. This is pretty good going considering there are only three of them, with Elana Fremerman setting a ferocious pace on fiddle and vocals.

Austin's own Darden Smith tarnishes the Texan cause slightly by sounding too fey on Extra Extra (Haven Records, **); but stampeding in from way out west comes Dale Watson, whose Christmas Time in Texas (Continental Song City, ****) could prove to be the one Christmas album it's possible to listen to all year round. Dale, who has serious form as a crooner, leaps nimbly from the bogus Elvis-isms of Christmas in Vegas, to the laidback lope of Christmas in Texas, to the Bing Crosby-ish smooch-fest of The Christmas Song. But he can also summon the ghost of a legend like Merle Haggard, on the opening cut, Honky Tonk Christmas.

If it isn't Texas it's the Antipodes. One of the year's biggest surprises was Kasey Chambers's storming debut The Captain (Virgin, ****), on which the gal from Nullarbor Plain showed that country is a state of mind, not a geographical location. The only thing wrong with songs like "Southern Kind of Life" or "These Pines" was that they were so dyed-in-the-wool country that they scared cloth-eared commercial country radio to death.

For a trip back to country's origins in bluegrass and folk, you could do far worse than sample Real Time (Howdy Skies Records, ****), in which multi-instrumentalists Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott pluck and twang their way through a selection of their own tunes, traditional pieces and a couple of powerful songs by Hank Williams. In Hank's "Weary Blues from Waiting," the duo sound as woeful and windswept as the legendary Louvin Brothers. By contrast, they break out the dueling banjos for "Helen of Troy, Pennsylvania," and sound positively jovial on "Long Time Gone."

For a caustic survey of the state of commercial country music, look no further than Dallas Wayne's song "If That's Country," from his album Thinkin' Big (HMG, ***). In his menacing baritone, Wayne warns the music-biz fat cats that "you're turnin' our music into some kinda strange elevator noise" and adds that "you can make a star of a teenage girl, but one million dollars won't make her Merle." He takes a swipe at Garth Brooks, lays into another unnamed singer who "sounds like bad Phil Collins with a hip facelift," and signs off with "you can kiss my Ozark ass if that's country." Go git 'em, Dallas!

Anyone who saw Emmylou Harris on her recent UK tour will have caught a glimpse of Patty Griffin, who wrote "One Big Love" (included on Emmylou's Red Dirt Girl album). Griffin's own version is included on Flaming Red (A&M, ***), her 1998 album just released here in tandem with her debut, Living with Ghosts (A&M, ****).

The contrast between the two is bizarre. Flaming Red kicks off with the ferocious thrash-punk blast of its title song. But Living with Ghosts, a collection of Griffin's demos from 1996, found her testing the limits of her formidable voice with just an acoustic guitar for company. If she sounds uncannily like Alanis Morissette on "Every Little Bit," she can also evoke the spirits of Rickie Lee Jones, Bonnie Raitt and even Bruce Springsteen. Her songs, like "Let Him Fly" or "Poor Man's House," are frighteningly good.