Steve Earle
Townes
Rating: 3.5
Label: New West
In the wide expanses of Texas, the late Townes Van Zandt is still held up as some kind of desert poet laureate, a voice for the empty plains and broke down towns that litter the horizon. Though musically he has plenty in common with fellow Texan icons like Joe Ely, lyrically he could be seen as a cowboy Kerouac, living his life much the same way. Van Zandt was a drifter by nature, leading the type of life that wouldn’t be out of place in a Terence Malick film. So it makes sense that Steve Earle, a long-known devoted Van Zandt fan, would release an entire album of Van Zandt covers aptly titled Townes; after all, Earle is so devoted, he even named his son after the musician. In many ways, Earle has led a life in the shadow of Van Zandt, so enamored by his idol that he sought to live an identical lifestyle, facing the same demons of addiction and excess Van Zandt did, with the same wandering spirit guiding him.
It also makes perfect sense that Townes is Earle’s most consistent, solid work since Transcendental Blues, which was released nearly a decade ago. It seemed that Earle had become the age-old rockist cliché: once an artist stops suffering (in this case from that similar old rock cliché drugs and alcohol, addictions that landed him in prison) the artist stops producing true art. This, of course, was better for Earle’s life, but it was an unexpected decline in artistry that lost him many of his longtime fans.
Townes should bring them back in droves. The album is, for the most part, more spare than his recent work has been, bearing some similarity to releases as far back as Guitar Town or Copperhead Road and in other areas the country-rock-folk hybrid Earle perfected on Transcendental Blues. In terms of the former, the album’s opening track, the classic Van Zandt number “Pancho and Lefty,” is a devastatingly effective example. Starting only with a minimal, haltingly strummed acoustic guitar and Earle’s iconic voice, it feels as though the listener is invading a private moment, the artist just goofing off in the hallway of the studio while waiting for the band, not really playing so much as just relaxing. When the band does come in, they come in slowly, the instruments introduced in sprints rather than all at once, creating a wonderful cinematic moment, the musical equivalent of the sun rising.
“No Place to Fall,” however, would have fit perfectly on Transcendental Blues, Earle utilizing the same breathy vocal technique he used there to sweeten his otherwise gruff voice. It helps that the track is buoyed by some of Transcendental’s organ-like accordions and light percussion.
Elsewhere, though, Earle unfortunately also drags some of his latter-day heavy handedness to the album, with a few of the tracks overly fussed over, resulting in glaring missteps on an otherwise flawless work. In particular, “Lungs” stands out; painfully overcompressed acoustic guitars and filtered vocals start the track before it bizarrely wanders into Everlast territory, with Earle’s imitation of a hip-hop drum sample anchoring the track before heavy-metal blues guitars stumble in. Earle also overdoes the blues-traits inherit in Van Zandt’s guitar work on “Brand New Companion,” making the track an uncomfortable white-boy blues moment.
Earle fares better when he keeps things sparse, like on the light, excellent “Delta Momma Blues” or on the bluegrass excursion that he turns “White Freightliner Blues” into. It’s clear that Earle has put a lot of love and care into Townes and by channeling this similarly troubled songwriter, Earle might have found some much needed inspiration. In some places Earle even vastly improves on the original, his rough, gravelly voice adding a further depth. Nowhere is this clearer than on “Marie,” which Earle sings with a subtle, slightly psychotic edge that Van Zandt could never have pulled off, especially when it comes to lines like “Well, Marie she didn’t wake up this morn’/ Didn’t even try/ Just rolled over and went to heaven/ My little boy safe inside.” If Earle can take some of what he’s displayed here and infuse his own work with it, maybe even channel some of Van Zandt’s murderous, desperate characters, we can all pretend the last half a decade didn’t even happen.
by Morgan Davis
