Wilco

Cash Savage & The Last Drinks: Good Citizens

Everyone’s got a “fucked-up way” of being good citizens – or so Melbourne’s Cash Savage tells us on the title track of her fourth album. Some of the things that might help us feel good about ourselves are rooted in inequalities and injustice. Like, for example, voting in a voluntary postal survey on whether or not LGBTIQ people should be able to marry.

Good Citizens was written against the backdrop of that risible survey, the trauma it caused Savage’s community, and the aftermath: that even when you might have got the result a large majority of the population wanted, amid the celebrations and self-congratulations, the scars of being asked to justify and defend your own identity and humanity remain.

That trauma though has produced her most focused, cohesive record. Gone is any vestige of the faint Americana leanings of her earlier albums. The nine songs here are all brawling rock & roll and crushing ballads. It’s got more in common with Nick Cave and the Dirty Three, in Savage’s vocals and Kat Mear’s sawing violin, than Wilco – much less the Band.

But while the basic reference points are clear, Savage has never sounded more self-assured – or more Australian. Her voice is magnificent throughout, whether she’s gently chiding her country on Better Than That (“There’s a lot of people thinking I’m up for discussion”, she notes) or tearing through the pub-punk rock of Pack Animals.… Read more..

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Carrie & the Cut Snakes

Back in 1990, when Uncle Tupelo released No Depression, the idea of alt-country probably seemed necessary. Garth Brooks’ self-titled album had been released the year before, and country music as a genre seemed to be losing touch with its roots: as the stars of the Grand Ole Opry drifted towards the excesses of arena rock, the signifiers (10-gallon hats, tassels and so on) were getting in the way of the substance.

By giving the genre the same kick in the pants punk gave to rock, the movement has been remarkably successful. It may not have spared us from Shania Twain or Faith Hill, but throughout the 1990s, artists as varied as Lucinda Williams, (early) Wilco, Gillian Welch and Steve Earle have reminded us of country music’s fundamental, deeply earnest mission: small stories of small lives, writ large.

So I’m not sure we especially need alt-country any more, any more than we really need alternative music. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the self-titled debut album by Carrie and the Cut Snakes, which I wouldn’t describe as alt-country any more than Carrie Henschell’s heroine, Dolly Parton.

This is, in case you’re wondering, a good thing. Henschell is a 20-something songwriter from Brisbane, whose parents live on a farm on the Darling Downs.… Read more..

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