Bloggerhythms

Labeling Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit's latest album as Americana, suits The Nashville Sound quite well. It's a rock record with a lot of acoustic touches - many by Isbell's wife, fiddle player Amanda Shires, who has her own successful career - but it never quite crosses the line into pure country, except for the outstanding closer, "Something To Love." While all of the music here is very listenable it's the songwriting that makes this disc stand out. As always, Isbell is a thoughtful and introspective composer. "If We Were Vampires" is an acoustic ballad that discusses death and life after one half of a couple passes. He sings, "....this can't go on forever. Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone. Maybe we'll get forty years together, But one day I'll be gone, Or one day you'll be gone" and "If we were vampires and death was a joke we'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke...." On the uplif...

Despite its melodrama Elvis Presley's 1968 hit single, "If I Can Dream," is one of his finer performances and has always been a particular favorite of mine. It was written especially for The King by Walter Earl Brown two months after the Martin Luther King assassination and the connection between the song and MLK should be obvious. The song's world debut was as the finale to Presley's '68 Comeback Special , a show that completely revitalized his career. The vocal and arrangement utilized one of my favorite musical devices. It starts out soft and low, gradually builds in intensity, then pushes the pedal to the metal, ending with a full blown orchestra and chorus. When he heard it, Presley said, "I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another picture I don't believe in." His obsessively controlling manager, Col. Tom Parker, did not want Presley to do the song but he wanted to record it, i...

This is an updated review that originally appeared here in May 2005. Black 47, named after the blackest year of the Irish potato famine of 1847, began recording in 1992, but I never had the opportunity to hear them until 2000, and then only because I sampled Trouble In The Land at a listening booth at Borders Books & Music. After that I immediately became a huge fan and even had the opportunity to interview bandleader Larry Kirwan . Black 47 was a cult favorite with a sizeable national audience but you'll almost never hear them on the radio. After searching the web I discovered they had quite a following, especially in their native New York City. The only time I've ever heard them on the radio is when Kirwan plays them on Celtic Crush , his own SiriusXM radio show. The program appears on their eclectic rock station, The Loft . Times change. Borders is gone, Black 47 is too. They broke up after twenty-five years in 2014, and The Loft is on no longer on the satellites...