Nashville Scene Poll

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2006:

1. This Old Road—Kris Kristofferson
In the Hebrew tradition, prophecy was not something either desired or sought after. I think of Kris Kristofferson, exhausted and hopeful, desperate that someone with more energy would take over, but no one ever comes. His is the closest that we have come to a Jeremiah.
2. Out of the Ashes—Jessi Colter
The interesting thing about the outlaw movement, was the inclusion of married couples or couples in relationships. Jessi Colter was on the first album that defined the genre, and has been singing since then. This could have been a broken mourning record, but she seems settled and happy, despite Waylon's loss. A wise piece of work, filled with hard fought sentiment. When she sings The Eye is On the Sparrow, for those 3 minutes, I am convinced that Jesus loves me.
3. Foothill Dandy—Cindy Bostle
I always wonder why the huge scene in Australia, folk, roots or country, hasn't really broken in America. Another example of an amazing singer and player, overlooked for the wrong geographical reasons.
4. These Animal Years—Josh Ritter
Calling him the next Dylan would be a horrible cliché, and anyways Frank Kogan has claimed that role for Ashley Simpson, but there is something cryptic, and real, and fractal here, that strikes me as close to Freewheeling as we are going to get. (Because every generation gets the Dylan he deserves) That said, Ritter can genuinely sing, and has a deep talent for couplets that tell the truth in plain speech, but is also capable of that allusion rich, difficult traps we have come to expect. Comforting, and calming, though it shouldn't be, considering how eschatological it is in places, or how much it is about losing his girlfriend in an unjust war, or any other examples of transcendent misery.
5. Someone Wrote Love-- George Canyon
He has a great voice, recorded this years great drinking song, can use the word Hoss properly, and loves his kid as much as his daddy—all of which would place him high on the list. But over and over, he mentions writing, and cleaning writing, the permanent and temporariness of writing, from carving on trees to paiting on water towers (in the albums great metaphor, he talks about how an old boyfriend wrote his lovers name on the water tower, and now he is going to have to clean it off, with turpentine and elbow grease.) I think that it might be too deep for Canyon, but the continued popping up, of that belief in the written word, and the recognizing of his fragility, made it for me.
6. Josh Turner—Your Man
Because his voice makes me melt
7. Black Cadillac—Roseanne Cash
Johnny Cash wasn't beneath any rhetorical trick, he could find, to make the story better, he was filled with cheap theatrics, and an alt-country queen talking about her dead daddy for an hour, shows that Roseanne has learned every one of her fathers lessons except humor and humility. So the album is leaden but unavoidable in its power.
8. Tom Waits—Orphans, etc.
Proving that the Silver Jew's David Berman was right, when he sang "all my favorite singers couldn't sing", this 3 CD set is an epic mess that proves Waites is a true American original, and one of the best interpretive singers in it's history. (It's sort of his Judy at Carnegie moment, when he collapses into cliché, and a performance so coded, it might as well be Kabuki, and it still works out rather amazingly, because its not the songs or the singer but the schtick that ever lasts. )
9. Rogue's Gallery –Various Artists
With all of this trendy obsession with Pirates being cute and ironic (see Pirates of the Caribbean, Pop Up Pete, Talk Like A Pirate Day, and Dave Eggers, for starter) one forgets important things about them—like how they raped, murdered, tortured and rogered there way through the centuries. This collection reminds us that folk songs come from somewhere, and pays attention to the context that is lost from cheapness.

10. We Shall Over Come: The Seeger Sessons- Bruce Springsteen
Because he managed to avoid this being a circle jerk of lefty banality, and actually rocked through a couple of numbers.

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2006:

1. Not Ready To Make Nice—Dixie Chicks
Whiny and entitled bitches, who are trying to make a career at art, after a career at commerce didn't fulfill them enough, all of this can be forgiven listening here. There is an intensity, an overwrought, gothic gravitas, that makes the tempest seem like a tsunami.
2. Running Block—Toby Keith
It's cheap but it isn't as nasty as Toby thinks it is. But it continues Toby's continued belief in pleasure. For the first time, this pleasure might be tempered by a bit of responsibility, forgoing a pump and dump for a solid night of bros before hos love making . Also, how he sings the line "co-eds swimming nekkid" is the sexiest white trash phrasing in recent memory.
3. Stealing Kisses—Faith Hill
The single was this year; the album was last year. My biggest surprise was that I found myself loving Faith. She has become accustomed to her instrument, the warmth, and full-throated commitment to melancholy and desire had an intensity that reminds me of Dionne Warwick.
4. Like Red on a Rose--Alan Jackson
Alan finally gives up any attempts at commercialism, and signs onto old school countrypolitian, like Lee Ann Womack last year. It's not nearly as good, and the album is filled with patronizing clichés, but the man believes his pure and unadulterated schmaltz. There is something be said for a singer who is willing to genuinely engage lines like "I love you like all little children love pennies" I want it to be sung as a torch song, by someone who has known other pleasures besides hetero-pairbonding, but one takes what one is given.
5. Like We Never Loved At All—Tim McGraw/Faith Hill
That aforementioned torch song, and one of the best, made more interesting by noticing that though they seem relatively happy, all the best duets by them feature breaking up.
6. Settle for A Slow Down—Dierks Bentley
7. Hold My Beer (While I Kiss Your Girlfriend)—Aaron Pritchett
Famous in Canada, this linebacker of a man has more urban slickness then most hicks north of the 49th. A one-line joke song that is genuinely funny.
8. On The Shores of Old Mexico--George Strait
Elegiac, and gorgeous, here because it is so confident that memory and history can be as much of an aphrodisiac as power and youth.
9. Josh Turner: Your Man
Turner is the best singer this year, hands down, and this song makes me hard just thinking about it.
10. Amarillo Morning--Jason Aldean
There is something to be said for rural verisimilitude, and I think Aldean has it, more then almost any other singer working today, and I think that the feelings are legitimate. I have had conversations with family, and friends still on farms, and they seem broken, in ways that my mother never remembers. The hope that is in play here is a lot more effective then the butch posturing of someone like Montgomery Gentry. Because sometimes Daddy has to sell the farm, or the bank takes the farm away from daddy. That said, it creates an overly simplified dialectic, refusing responsibility or political responsibility for a complicated situation.

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2006:

1 Bob Willis and The Texas Playboys
A well-constructed, decently curated best-of, which has all of the seminal texts needed, in a cheap and available package.
2. Reflected: Greatest Hits Vol. 2 Tim McGraw
It is rare, that a greatest hits package seems necessary, and even rarer that the new song is as strong as the albums that preceded it. The warmth, emotional complexity, the raw encounters…Tim McGraw, I think is underrated in his capability for negotiating the contemporary thicket of suburban ennui. And he gets better and better, nothing embarrassing, nothing out of place here.
3. Country Heat 2007
I think that these work so well as time capsules, immediate, and shiny, they will tell us what we listened to in 1997, or 2000. There is something then, immediate, but forward looking, that the best of pop should achieve, and the Heat collections do it much better than the Now collections.
4. Hillbilly Hot Rod and Automobile Songs—V/A
From the amazing British company Jasmine Records, who sends me a catalog twice a year, chock full of cheap CDs of jazz, nostalgic and country CDs, no sexy packaging, no long essays, just the music. The comps are really good, because they don't go for either the obvious or the obscure. This collection has great Hot Rod songs, but extends and embraces the rest of mid-century automobile culture from there. 24 songs you never thought yo needed, till you had the album in your hand. Great Fun.
5.Johnny Bond-I Like My Chicken Frying Size
This boogie-woogie master provides the missing link between rockabilly and just plain rock, plus the best title of the year. Produced by the same company as Hillbilly Hot Rod.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2006:

1. Josh Turner
2. Tim McGraw
3. Jason Ritter



COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2006:

1. Cindy Bostle
2. Carrie Underwood
3. Faith Hill


COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2006:

1. Josh Ritter
2. Gordie Sampson
3.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2006:

1. Montgomery Gentry
2. Tim Hill/Faith McGraw
3.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST INSTRUMENTALISTS OF 2006:

1. Emily Robison
2.
3.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2006:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Chris Young
3.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2006:

1. Josh Ritter
2. Tom Waites
3. Faith Hill