I’ve long been a fan of The Jayhawks, discovering their music through a recommendation, then discovering to my disappointment that they’d split up years before.

So, my ears pricked up today when I heard that Gary Louris and Mark Olson, the brains behind The Jayhawks have come together to release a new album, Ready For The Flood. It even sounds like a Jayhawks type of title, doesn’t it?

I’m busting to hear some of this new material, and if you’ve never listened to a Jayhawks album before, I suggest you go out and find one. They’re an awesome band and their music is just so sweet and relaxing to listen to.

The new album is going to be released either in the summer or autumn of this year, despite it being recorded in January 2007. The delay was to allow for Louris‘ and Olson’s solo album releases.

My guess is that although they could return to the Jayhawks moniker for this release, they probably decided that they would be able to be slightly more creative than if they felt they had to live up to certain fan expectations. Many of the articles I’ve read about The Jayhawks lead with a missive about how they got tagged as an alt-country act early on in their career and were never able to break out of those constraints.

Regardless of what they decide to call the act, anything these two release is guaranteed to be excellent. I’ve just been reminded that Gary Louris was one of the songwriters on the Dixie Chicks’ Taking The Long Way album - another reason to sit on the edge of your seat until Ready For The Flood gets released.

I picked up the Jayhawks‘ 2000 album Smile a couple of years ago. If you’ve never listened to the Jayhawks before, I suggest you check them out.

The popular term for their music is alt-country or something like that. The title track to Smile is a really sweet song - and one I wanted to share with you guys today.

It’s a beautifully crafted piece of country-pop, rich in harmonies and uplifting choruses. And Smile has a simple, positive message:

(Chin up, chin up)
You don’t really have a problem
(Chin up, chin up)
In your hour of despair

And smile when you’re down and out
(Find something inside you)
Smile when you’re down and out
(Find something inside you)

Unfortunately, The Jayhawks are no more, but this song (hell, the whole album) is worth revisiting. Once you’ve heard it, you won’t be able to get it out of your head.

Before today you’d have been forgiven for thinking the only thing Jessica Simpson and Dolly Parton had in common was ginormous breasts. But that’s not the case. You see, our Jessica’s itching to become a country star.

I smell a commercially-driven cross-genre jump. Do you?

The reason is because Ms Simpson is now claiming that she’s all country and “always wanted to make a country album”. In the Billboard article linked to above, she goes on a charm offensive, citing big name female country stars as ‘inspiration’ and suddenly declaring her undying love for Nashville:

Nashville is a very warm city. The people are friendly and kind. There is a sense of community, which thrives on music. There is no animosity … only respect for one another’s talent.

Now, I’m cynical by nature. But considering Kelly Clarkson’s recent defection from rawk to country, Jessica Simpson’s move strikes me as typical of her copycat tendencies.

She rose to fame as a veritable Britney/Christina clone, then got hitched to boybander Nick Lachey. After doing their own reality TV thing for a while, Simpson and Lachey got divorced in 2006.

However, in terms of her musical accomplishments, Jessica Simpson has few. In fact, her recent attempts at pop success have been been mediocre to say the least.

My feeling is that she’s going to tackle the niche country music market on the “I’m from Texas” ticket. How that’ll go down with country fans considering her sexual image remains to be seen. I remember Shania Twain complaining that Nashville didn’t take kindly to her exposed midriff in the 90’s. Have times changed?

London Still was a single from their 2003 album Up All Night, which remains to this day an unsung classic acoustic folk/blues/country album.

A lot of the songs on the Up All Night album dealt with issues of distance and homesickness, and London Still seemed to be their definitive homesick tune. The lyric “today I dream of home and not of London anymore” says it all.

Sung by Donna Simpson, the tune has a feeling of lazily living out life in the city but increasingly yearning for home. It describes tube trips over to Camden to wander around and buy records and in that way captures the romance of living in a foreign city.

The guitar work (which I’ll attribute to Josh Cunningham) is flawless and melodic, with cascading acoustic runs and resonating chords punctuating the story. Definitely a classic tune, from a band who are well worth a listen.

I’m a big fan of the Up All Night album, so I suggest you start there if you want to get to know The Waifs better. They’ve also got a new album out called ’sundirtwater’, which I can’t wait to hear.

And if you didn’t know better, you’d swear that this was straight from the Man in Black himself. The singer is a guy called Mark Lanegan who definitely has the same cracked, husky voice that we associate with Cash.

A review over on Gigwise draws similar conclusions: this could be Cash on his American recordings - fatalistic, apocalyptic vocals. Even the mournful piano and quiet guitar arpeggios play (unintentional?) tribute.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this derivative, because there’s plenty of room in music to explore this particular style, and Soulsavers manage to pull it off with authority. Kingdoms Of Rain comes highly recommended.

Ah, the ‘Jovi, they used to rock. But since 1992, each successive album has seen their hard rockin’ style watered away. 2007 sees us with either a more mature sounding group or an American country pub band.

If you didn’t know it was Bon Jovi, the Lost Highway single is a passable enough song. Radio-friendly, inoffensive, but ultimately forgettable.

And that’s the problem - this band seems to have jettisoned their original audience. Even the video’s an admission of Bon Jovi’s relegation to pub rock status. The next video will no doubt feature them playing in a barn. And Jon seems to have missed a memo that waistcoats aren’t cool anymore.

In my last post, I celebrated Bon Jovi’s legacy of creating great music. It’s to my constant disappointment that they’ve failed to keep the (faith?) flame alive and continue writing anthemic rock tunes. When you consider the shelf life of those early iconic songs and the mediocrity enshrined in Lost Highway, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

Bon Jovi are on a Slippery slope with this one. (See what I did there?)

[tags]Bon Jovi, Singles, 2007, Thumbs Down[/tags]

We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.

The Long Way Around is the lead track from their latest album after those remarks, and a number of the songs address that issue.

In essence, The Long Way Around is a song about asserting your independence and choosing the harder path. I’d go a step further than that: it’s virtually a modern-day anthem. The opening lyrics set the tone especially well:

My friends from high school
Married their high school boyfriends
Moved into houses in the same ZIP codes
Where their parents lived
But I, I could never follow…

This kind of theme really speaks to me in music. The girls come across as brilliantly anti-establishment on this one, free spirited and determined. A great start to an album which follows a major controversy that could have killed the groups careers. They reference Natalie’s anti-Bush comments in the line “It’s been two long years now, since the top of the world came crashing down…”

You’ve got to appreciate their ballsy approach - they could easily have caved in to the threats (yes, threats) to shut up and sing, but they’ve chosen not to walk away from their remarks. Makes me like them even more :)

With this new album, the Dixie Chicks have retained their country sound, but it’s evolved in a more radio-friendly rock direction. Possibly a sensible move, since they received a lot of criticism from the Country Music establishment. Widening their appeal by reaching out to the mass market may have been the sensible thing to do. However, as one pundit remarked, with the rest of America seemingly waking up to George Bush, those critics should go out and buy a copy of the new Dixie Chicks album in penance!

OK, I’ve said my piece, given the track a huge thumbs up, now check out a live video of the Dixie chicks performing The Long Way Around:

Hurt, in particular, has the potential to break your heart. Johnny’s voice is heavy and frail throughout, and the slow pounding piano grows and becomes more insistent as the song reaches its end.

What gets me is how Cash re-interprets a song written by someone from a completely different generation (Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails).

Having seen the Walk The Line biopic and knowing a little bit about Cash’s life makes the song all the more poignant. The accompanying video is a tasteful retrospective of various milestones in his career, and the song takes on such a raw, personal quality. I have to say that I have never heard a song before or since that has had such a profound effect on me.

For me, the most touching part of the video is where Johnny is performing in the lounge of his house and you see his wife June looking down from the staircase. Her face appears careworn and anxious. Both were at the later stages of their lives and died within months of each other in 2003.

I don’t think there’s another song that I could name that has such poignance and depth. Check out the video.