It’s been six years since Josh Rouse released a proper solo album along the lines of his stellar mid-career trio, Under Cold Blue Stars, 1972 and Nashville.
He followed his muse (and his wife) to Spain after 2007’s Country Mouse, City House and released one half-Spanish album and a couple of sleepy EPs. And while those records had their moments, they just didn’t feel like the Josh Rouse I love.
A couple of years ago I finally succumbed to all of the great things I’d been reading about Miranda Lambert and bought a couple of her albums.
Regular readers of this blog know that I fell hard for her blend of sass and sensitivity, and songwriting chops I’d never associated with country music.
The other day I was very excited when my Facebook feed served up not just the usual mix of ads and self-help soliloquies but an announcement that immediately moved me to action.
Tift Merritt, the singer-songwriter beloved by me and a handful of NPR listeners who recognize her as a sublime cross between Joni Mitchell and Lucinda Williams, is coming to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.
This might not be a popular decision around these parts, but I was intrigued enough by my three-week exploration of Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs that I’ve decided to continue the experiment.
Over the next three weeks I will dissect each song on Arcade Fire’s 2007 album Neon Bible, starting with the first single, ‘No Cars Go.’
Here’s one of those early tracks from the first volume of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series. This song was an outtake from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
Unlike many of the songs that were inexplicably left off of Dylan’s albums over the years, scrapping this one was a good choice. It’s certainly not bad, but neither does it rise to the high level of everything else on Freewheelin’.
