Tracks: Introduction - Theme - Night Life//Lonely Street//The Wild Side of Life//Sittin' & Thinkin'//The Twenty-Fourth Hour//A Girl in the Night//Pride//There's No Fool Like A Young Fool//If She Could See Me Now//Bright Lights and Blonde-Haired Women//Are You Sure?//Let Me Talk to You
"So me and the Cherokee Cowboys are knocking on you record player once more, and we hope that you can just kinda sit back, kick-off your shoes, and relax just a little bit, and listen to our latest album..."
Well, I suppose I should explain myself. You see, I’m following a couple of other “1001 albums” blogs, and the consensus between them seems to be that Ray Price’s Night Life is a ridiculous load of hooey. Myself, however, I quite liked it. In fact if it weren’t for a few unfortunate missteps I might even have loved it. I put the blame with my father, personally – growing-up I was saturated with AM nostalgia stations to the point where I am now perfectly capable of enjoying “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks. My dad also has a considerable fondness for country music, and it’s rubbed off on me to an extent. So, given that Ray Price comes across as some sort of strange fusion of Perry Como and Hank Williams, I’ve been well-equipped by life to appreciate his... unique charms.
Putting excuses aside, this is really a pretty fine album. Apparently it is “honky tonk”, but making overtures towards the “Nashville Sound”. I had no real idea what that meant, so I looked it up – apparently honky-tonky is a stripped-back, rhythmic sort of country music with emphasis on things like pedal steel guitars and melancholy lyrics (so basically stereotypical country), while the Nashville Sound is the slick, pop-influenced style of more heavily orchestrated country music coming out of, well, Nashville during the late 50s and early 60s. I guess Patsy Cline falls into the latter category? There are actually a few songs here that sound a lot like Patsy Cline, largely I suppose because Willie Nelson, who wrote the title track, also wrote the Cline hit “Crazy”.
And speaking of that title track – what a song! A song worth buying an album for! “The night life ain’t no good life, but it’s my life...” That about sums-up the tenor of this collection, which has actually been referred to as Country’s first concept album. You get a ghostly, reverb-drenched vocal by Price, appropriately downtrodden and mournful lyrics, and some truly awe-inspiring slide work by Buddy Emmons. It’s a beautiful song, and works as a great intro to the album. Certainly better than the album’s actual intro, which consists of Price addressing the listener directly and explaining that he’s about to sing a collection of down-tempo songs about down-trodden bar-flies. We have ears, Ray. We could figure that out for ourselves.
The rest of the album can’t really match “Night Life” for quality, but it does remain top-flight and consistently engaging throughout its length. The lyrics can occasionally be a little silly – I don’t know that anyone can really take the line “I didn’t know god made honky-tonk angles” seriously, aside from Ray price apparently – and their relentless sentimentalism and “woe-is-me” content did grate on me at times, but thankfully this latter aspect is only really a problem when Price sings in the first person. Songs like “There’s No Fool Like A Young Fool” may not be saying anything especially new, but if there’s one thing country music is good for it’s tugging the heart strings, and if there’s one type of person I’ve known a lot of in my life it’s young women who’ve made some fantastically stupid decisions. Unfortunately, it’s a bit patronising, but its heart’s in the right place.
So, to sum up – I quite like this. Even if one ignores the lyrics, Ray Price’s voice is amazing, Buddy Emmons’ guitar is amazing, and there’s a marvellously subtle use of accompanying instruments like barely audible backing vocals and pianos tinkling away miles into the distance. It may be woefully sentimental and at times rather silly, but it’s the perfect sort of album to pop on and drift off to, and I will admit that I find it very, very hard not to sing along. “Bright Lights and Blonde-Haired Women” is catchy as hell!
So, yeah – Country! An excellent album! I bet you like The Trinity Sessions and Neko Case and maybe you should like this too.
8.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment