CD reviews: Steve Earle – Townes – Vinyl

By Brett Gideon

Spend some time looking into Townes Van Zandt’s life and you’ll find darkness, heartache and struggle in abundance. Alcoholism, addiction, depression and divorce followed Van Zandt, so it comes as no surprise that his songs are laced with misery; every rare drop of hope comes with a large bucket of despair. The darkness permeates every song, even when the tone is upbeat. On ‘White Freightliner’, for example, the lyrics deal with death and the forgetting of troubles.

The dark subjects and lyrics make these songs extremely powerful and far removed from the ‘my dog died, my woman left me, my truck done broke down’ country music clichés.

It’s easy to appreciate how Van Zandt became an inspiration to so many musicians – the man could write.  One of Van Zandt’s most fervent disciples, Steve Earle, takes the songs and gives them the gritty voice they deserve; wistful, melancholic, desperate and always believably emotional. This performance is not phoned in; Earle is right inside the music from word one and the album cries for repeated listening to appreciate the how well the songs match the vocals.

This is a very good acoustic recording; clear, uncompressed and open, presented on two 180g records with all the lyrics on a gatefold sleeve. I wouldn’t even bother with the CD version; this album deserves to be heard on vinyl. One of my favourite albums this year.