Steve Earle

Townes

(New West)

Amazon

iTunes

Listen at MOG

Review [11.May.2009]

Townes is arguably the quintessential Americana album. Townes Van Zandt is Americana—not the culture industry’s Statuettes of Liberty and Fourth of July parades, but its people, especially its millions of restless outcasts. His songs conjure a culture’s icons: forlorn Edward Hopper loners, restless Melvillean vagabonds, and downcast Bukowskian couples. They often cite the geography to which they belong and are fleeing, from Texas and New Mexico to Cleveland and Greensboro. Their melodies and rhythms are as plucky as they are distraught. Americana is Steve Earle, too: an ex-con and an ex-junkie; an anti-death penalty, anti-landmine, and anti-war activist; an actor, writer, and singer. And Townes Van Zandt, dead in 1997, was Earle’s close friend. This album is a musical eulogy from one great U.S. singer-songwriter to another. It’s partly Van Zandt in his own words—his recurrent bewilderment with the universe and his small but surprisingly sustainable consolations in highways, smiles, wine, and one-night-stands. Yet it subtly interprets, expands, and salutes its subject through Earle’s signature scruff vocals, familiar repertoire of arrangements, and excellent vocal contributions from Justin Townes Earle, Tom Morello, and Allison Moorer.