The reason why both rap and country music so easily fall
into clichés and stereotypes is their focus on story and personality. Unlike
the other lyrically focused mainstream genre, rock, both rap and country focus
more on narrative than on raw emotion; while this can make the songs more
interesting, it also means they often take more time to make their point. A
rock song can often summarize their point in one chorus, while some country
songs take a few full verses to get interesting; ditto with classic rap music,
which required the listener to pay close enough attention to decipher the
rapid-fire lyrics.
When rap crossed over to the mainstream for good, it did so
by slowing the tempo and putting an emphasis on hooks. Hooks are the choruses
of modern rap music, providing something to get stuck in a person’s head and
make them stop the dial when surfing the radio. Eminem arguably mastered the
trick, using it to embed “My Name Is” so far into the popular consciousness
that it essentially guaranteed his future career. Similarly, “In Da Club”
turned 50 Cent from an underground hero to a superstar by keeping him from
rapping at all.
Country music, however, hasn’t figured out a similarly
surefire method. While rap has managed to partially break free from its
radio-dial ghetto, country music is typically ostracized from pop stations.
There are a few exceptions (there always are) such as Taylor Swift, but
generally even the biggest names in country are confined to stations with names
like The Wolf or Bronco.
I’d make a guess that this is due to country music’s seeming
exclusiveness. While rap music has an almost tidal pattern of rappers going in
and out of the public favor, country music has been more or less stagnant for
decades, with the only real changes being dropouts and the occasional American
Idol nods. Newer musicians tend to avoid the traditional country music tropes
by either moderating the bombast (think Doug Paisley) or by introducing new
instruments and styles.
The latter form, typically labeled alt-country, was
pioneered by Johnny Cash in two ways: his insistence on a drum sound for “I
Walk The Line” (drums weren’t used in country music back in the 50s so he ended
up using a piece of paper in his guitar to get a snare sound) and the
dream-inspired, mariachi horn hook of “Ring Of Fire”. Music historians could
probably break both of these down into greater detail or add other wrinkles
(Nathan Rabin’s Nashville Or Bust series for The AV Club is a good
source for this kind of thing) but I see them as the first steps toward the
restless innovations of alt-country.
While drums are now fundamental to country music (to the
extent that “Nashville sound” is a music term for a specific drum recording
method) the “Ring Of Fire” horns typically disappear. Country is not a genre
that tends to have strong hooks aside from guitar riffs; even alt-country tends
to stick moderately close to the usual rock band setup. What the mariachi hook
proved is that country music can be malleable. It isn’t as rigid as most bands
would have you believe.
What alt-country tends to do is alter the musical formula of
country while leaving the vocal styles more-or-less intact. Interestingly, this
makes alt-country closer to the genres foundations that most modern country
songs, which tend to take their cues from the outsized vocal talents seen in
R&B and soul. Classic country singers tended to have strong voices that
were used only in a very small range; much like rappers, they relied on their
personality and compellingly simple lyrics to carry their songs.
It should come as no surprise then that Lucero’s strongest
asset is Ben Nichols, the lead singer. The most successful songs on 1372
Overton Park present Nichols’ voice without making a need for him to
overextend himself; like Tom Waits, Nichols doesn’t need to sing to make his
lyrics convincing.
While the musical backing on 1372 is interesting on
its own, it’s the lyrics that really make the album special. The music, which
counterpoints typical country instrumentation with a brass section and keyboard
embellishments, keep the melancholy of the lyrics from weighing the songs down,
keeping the album away from vacuous doom and gloom. Much like Blunderbuss,
the seriousness of songs like “Goodbye Again” is given a counterpoint just as
hefty in the bursts of horns.
It’s a trick that can also be traced back to Bruce
Springsteen’s E Street Band. At its best, The Boss’s signature wall-of-sound
approach to recording his songs provided an airiness that gave him mainstream
status without necessitating any real sacrifices in quality. Like rock music,
Springsteen had hooks, but those hooks were there to service his blue-collar
stories.
Though Lucero haven’t enjoyed success anywhere near as
substantial as Springsteen’s (few artists have), the same approach is on
display. The opening track (which was also the first single) balances a story
of a desperate one-night stand (which can be traced to the classic “Born To
Run”) with cheerful brass and a piano riff intro. This isn’t exactly the kind of accompaniment
you would except for lines like “Freedom was all that she owned/She moved
faster all on her own/But the freedom had left her, left her drifting like
smoke” but the sheer disconnect between the knowing sadness of the lyrics and
the blind optimism of the music makes the song’s story all the more compelling.
Even the first truly sedate song on the album, “Can’t Feel A
Thing”, uses horns as punctuation marks, underlining the chorus description of
a man’s bride. Even if the song’s last verse starts off with the devastating
“She asked me if I loved her and I showed her the tattoo/Wasn't no answer but
for then it had to do”, those little bursts of brass help keep the song away
from total bleakness. It’s a musical way to suggest the love that’s keeping the
couple in the song together even when they can’t say the word, which is all the
more effective in its subtlety.
Although I can talk about the music and delivery all I want,
the real reason for my love of this album is simply the lyrics. In particular,
the lyrics for “Goodbye Again”, simply because they manage to pull off the
essential trick of story-based singing: making you believe it. In my case,
Lucero have a bit of an advantage in this song because lines like “Sometimes
all that I want/Is just to see your sweet face/But I know better than to see
you again cause/I know I can't make you stay” remind me of things that I need
old whiskey to dispel. Eve if the rest of the album was middling to decent I’d
probably be tempted to include it in this series for a song like that.
That ability for a listener to identify with a song gets
back to my old favorite of discussion points: authenticity. For example, were
Justin Bieber to sing a song like “Goodbye Again” or “Darken My Door”, a song
about a man begging an old girlfriend to come back home, it simply wouldn’t
ring true; his voice doesn’t have the necessary gravity and age behind it,
which would make even lyrics like Lucero’s ring false. Similarly, were any song
on this album presented with the plastic pop perfection of Katy Perry or the
dirty synths of Lady Gaga, it would render the lyrics comically serious. Doom
and gloom isn’t necessarily something to strive for, but if you’re putting your
heart and soul into lyrics they need to be sung and juxtaposed with at least a
fraction of that spirit. Synths and drum machines tend to undercut any emotion,
a fact that countless New Wave and synthpop artists have used to their
advantage.
The choices that Lucero make in their music are done
entirely in service to it. 1372 isn’t flashy, in spite of its brass, and
doesn’t speak so loudly that it drowns itself out. It’s music that chooses and
owns its flaws and shortcomings (“If we should falter, it's us should be blamed”
from “Mama”) and in doing so transforms them into strengths. When Nichols asks,
“If I shed this skin of iron and this breath of kerosene/Darling, would you
take a chance on me?” on “Hey Darlin', Do You Gamble?” he sums up much of the
album, which similarly needles the listener into looking past the rough voices
with brass and ivory grace notes. Like Blunderbuss and most of Beck’s
material, Lucero use odd stylistic choices to draw in attention, but they also
award that attention by making it mean something.
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