I adore music of almost any sort. I used to say that there were only two sorts of music that I could not enjoy country and western (10 points to those of you who spotted a vague Blues Brothers reference in that joke). The situation changed when Elvis Costello went to Nashville in 1982 and produced “Almost Blue”, his album of covers of classic and not so classic country songs. I was hooked by the lead single “Good Year for the Roses” and it is still a favourite now. When the album came out I naturally gravitated to the well known tracks like “Sweet Dreams” but one track grabbed me by the heart and has never let go, “Hot Burrito #1″ or as Costello calls it “I’m Your Toy”, which turned out to be a Gram Parsons track.
This led me to Gram Parsons and Costello also sent me off to look out Hank Williams Snr. Gram Parsons, it turned out was already part of my collection as he was on my favourite Rolling Stones LP “Let it Bleed” (as a side note you only need five Stones albums, “Let it Bleed”, “Beggars Banquet”, “Sticky Fingers”, “Exile on Main Street” and “Forty Licks”. the latter would be greatly improved if it had the full version of tracks on it rather than cutting so many great songs short. Anyway). I have a soft spot for the very melancholy country songs but find over produced country very hard to stomach. I wandered down the bluegrass route and took great joy in finding the albums by Jerry Garcia, already being a fan of his guitar playing with the Grateful Dead.
Eventually this led to the Avett Brothers album “Country Was”. A simple country album packed with good songs and full of promises to come. Their latest album “I and You and Love” is their major label debut and was issued via Columbia Records and American Recordings. it was produced by Rick Rubin, who surely can be spoken of in the same breath as the greatest producers in the history of modern music George Martin, Brian Eno and Phil Spector (as a producer not as a person at which he sucked donkey balls as Cartman would say).
The album starts with the title track and after 13 tracks of ballads, rock songs and bluegrass ends with “Incomplete and Insincere” two things this album is most certainly not. My personal favourites include the distinctly country “Laundry Service” (dig that violin solo folks), the very rocky “Kick Drum Heart”, the title track and the very country “January Wedding” the latter could surely count both Gram Parsons and Hank WIlliams as close relatives.
I am not alone in this love of the album and it will surely not be long before the Brothers are not a secret of those ahead of the curve but a staple fo the festival circuit and are being mentioned by Bono et al.
