10 things about the new lund album, a small outline

1. four songs in the middle do not fit into the general themes (Hard on Equipment, Tough on the Job), Family Reunion (not a Hank Jr track much to my sadness), Especially A Paint, and Ciselas Revenge)
   
2. those themes being history, the West, war, honour, violence, and masculinity
3. the general theme was supposed to be about horses, and it has a great, epic song about the history of horses, from the hussars to the mounties, a sort of cowboy reworking of sympathy for the devil, a song about the calvary, and a mournful ballad called my saddle horse has died (he has done horse songs before, including the lovely and reverent She Won't Come to Me) (c/c w. Dylan's all the pretty horses)
   
4. history from the general (horse solider) to the v. spec (brother brigham, brother young (one of the few works about the mormons that actually groks the argot, which is almost impossible unless one is born into the culture, growing up in southern alberta, this is not difficult, as my other says everyone has at least a cousin and he writes about them in several songs, including one on this album "the mormons and the drinkers and the mormons who either) and the tale of reagon era contra's student visa
5. takes work that has been incredibly controversial (ie LDS history or the Contras), and makes them into self contained tragic narratives, as an attempt to sort things down the middle
   
6. the work is v. well written
   
7. aside from the writing, the music works, from the fifes and drum of calvary, onwards, it pulses, regimented, quick, and inelegant, not quite rough
8. he calls it his serious album, it does seem more ambitious then it was, but he cannot give up his masterful, choruses, not quite hook laden, because hook laden suggests something more modern then he invokes here, ear worms of the golden age
   
9. in this sense, the (rollicking?) instrumentation, the cleverness of the words etc, are placed in relief against the tragedies of the words, of the narratives, sometimes not for the good (compare student vistas, with its soon to be iconic chorus, w. the anti pop drudgery of Bear/Eagle by Kristofferson, written not as history but as news)
   
10. all of that said, his ability to make both (unfashionable?) retrograde values, history, and complicated ethical situations into basically pop, well constructed commercial music, is a weird kind of dark magic, a kind of masonic alchemy, a gift i appreciate immensely.
    

i am ambigous abotu it, too ambitous, not centered enough, but the unfolding is fascinting.