Forgotten recordings from 20 years ago, which will delight Crowell fans.
Then Again was recorded in 2006 with the same band as on Rodney Crowell’s previous three albums, The Houston Kid (2001), Fate’s Right Hand (2003) and The Outsider (2005). It is a good album, with memorable and varied music, allied with original and interesting words. However, at the time, Crowell felt something was missing when he listened to the masters, shelved the album, and forgot about it. He explains that he thought: “Oh shit, I just hear all the same sounds and techniques glaring at me. I needed to have a different experience, so I went out to L.A. to make a record with Joe Henry.” Twenty years later, he discovered the album in his vaults and loved it: “I heard a record I wasn’t sick of. I was no longer sick of myself”. He found joy in putting the finishing touches to the recording as it felt like making a new record with his old bandmates.
Crowell is a true americana artist, in that you hear a wide range of American music in his work: country, folk, blues, soul, rock’n ’ roll, and fifties and sixties pop, amongst others. Here again, there is a wide range of styles on show, although the music is skewed towards pop and rock, rather than country. Many songs have guitar picking at their heart, and Crowell’s voice is as soothing and calm as ever. Bring It On Home To Memphis is sixties pop with a great chorus. Ballad of Artemis and Orion tells the Greek mythological tale to an Irish folk tune, with fiddle and mandolin. Sing Your Heart Out is slower pop with strings. Whatcha Gonna Do Now, featuring Lyle Lovett, has an almost-rap vocal, with a drum machine, but also steel guitar, which altogether gives it an originality.
Crowell has collaborated with many famous artists in the past, and so it is no surprise that some famous names join him here. Are You One Of Us? has Guy Clark providing growled Deep South interludes. It was the last recording that Crowell made with his great friend before Clark’s death. Here, Crowell returns to being a social commentator with his words about “fractured communities in America, defining themselves as much by who they exclude as by who they welcome”. The final track, Go Light a Candle, where faith is put under the microscope, was written in conjunction with Sam Baker and has Emmylou Harris and Lera Lynn contributing vocals.
Throughout his career, Crowell’s lyrics have had a seriousness and morality about them, and it is no different here. On the slightly Latin-flavoured If I Could Speak To Leonard, he wishes he could talk to his great hero Leonard Cohen, to get some peace of mind. 40 Winters is a very moving love song to an ailing partner of many years: “You made the simple life fit for a king”. The opener, I Won’t Lie, is a bit of a surprise in that it moves away from the morality in its dark words from a man trying to get a woman into bed: “If you must resist, I will tell you this/ There’s no end to how much damage I might do”. But Crowell doesn’t take himself too seriously, stating “I’m just the voice that you don’t really wanna hear” in The Has-Been Vents His Spleen, where he has a massive go at a “milk-toast” unnamed pop-country singer. Not apparently Dwight Yoakum or George Strait, though.
The release of these tracks is a worthwhile project which will delight Crowell fans and may make him some new fans among listeners previously unfamiliar with his work.
