“I guess you could call it a lost album. I stumbled upon it in my vault at home. I’d forgotten about it completely,” explained Rodney Crowell as he geared up for the release of an album that was, essentially, recorded two decades ago when he’d completed a trilogy of albums – The Houston Kid, Fate’s Right Hand, and The Outsider – which many critics consider his finest work. Almost immediately he went back into the studio but “I listened to it and thought, Oh shit, I just hear all the same sounds and techniques glaring at me. I needed to have a different experience, so I went out to LA to make a record [Sex & Gasoline] with Joe Henry.” Life moved on. He forgot about it.
When recently he stumbled across the tapes in his archives, he heard “a record I wasn’t sick of. I was no longer sick of myself. That’s what twenty years will do for you.” During his long career, Crowell has worked with all the greats and he practically defines “Americana”. The lost sessions found him trading lines with Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Kieran Goss and Annie Kinsella. “I just loved what happened once I rediscovered it. I wanted to call these guys up and say, Hey! Let’s make a new record. Then Again is like having one last dance with those guys.” He was able to call up another old pal, Emmylou Harris, with whom he worked in the mid-1970s in the Hot Band and with whom he later recorded two acclaimed albums. “Go Light a Candle”, their duet – a trio actually, with Lera Lynn – is one of two new recordings on Then Again.
And the album’s a keeper, feels like an old friend from the first play as it opens with Crowell singing to his trusty acoustic on “I Won’t Lie to You”. Then it’s into the bigger, angrier “Are You One of Us”, a song about the fissure that even back then was splitting America, with his old friend and mentor Guy Clark, the fellow Texan who inspired Crowell’s lyrical storytelling.
He also admired a very different figure: Leonard Cohen, who he considers "the most important songwriter of our time" – eat your heart out Bob Dylan! “If I Could Speak to Leonard” is just exquisite in every day. Slow, contemplative, written with the care and attention Cohen brought to all his work, its lyrics touch on all the aspects of Cohen’s life: From his immaculate dress (“If I could speak to Leonard, I'd don my finest suit / Wind my father's pocket watch and shine my shoes to boot / I'd learn to tie that Windsor knot I’ve long-sought-to-perfect / If not to win approval, at least the man's respect”); to his spirituality and lifelong quest; the complex symbolism of his writing; “the deep and holy texts in song and on the page”; his women… Leonard’s life is all there. The peerless arrangement – the Middle-Eastern inflection provided by the beautiful guitar solos (presumably Crowell) and John Jorgensen’s mandolin; Nat Smith and David Henry on cello: a gentle chorus of women… God, it’s just beautiful. The two might not have met (the song was written shortly before Cohen’s death in 2016) but you feel the great Canadian would approve. A miniature masterpiece.
Of course, as you’d expect from such a high-class musician, each song is beautifully arranged, lyrics and instrumentation in symbiosis which is something that cannot be said for all singer-songwriters. Crowell’s voice is always to the fore, even in the hip-hoppy number that is “Watcha Gonna Do?” with Lyle Lovett and Chely Wright. “40 Winters” is tender and delicate, a touching love song to his wife Claudia Church. And it’s impossible not to love “A Has-Been Vents His Spleen” in which he speaks for most of us as he sings about “belly-buttoned broads about eight years old”, “plastic Barbies who have never heard of Chrissie Hynde”, and a black-stetsoned “milk-toast so-and-so who’s never seen a horse”. Sing it Rodney, sing it.
Then Again should be in the collection of any self-respected lover of Americana. Crowell’s a true great. Hope he's made a thorough check of that vault.
Add comment