Results tagged “songwriting”

More than ever on the concert circuit, nostalgia is the move. With everyone from Liz Phair to Public Enemy to The Pixies (and those are just the P's) devoting gigs and sometimes entire tours to reviving their seminal albums in sequence, lots of long-lived performers — particularly those strugging to get even their cult to embrace their new music — have glommed to the trend.

Nick Lowe titled the career-spanning compilation he released earlier this year Quiet Please, and it ain't false advertising. The softer, sadder, more introspective country-soul phase Lowe commenced with 1994’s The Impossible Bird now comprises the entire second half of his recording career, one that’s been decelerating (though not eroding in quality) for some time. 2007’s At My Age was his first disc in six years, and he’s released no new music since.

Back in the second Clinton administration, when No Depression proudly billed itself as "The Alternative Country (whatever that is) bi-monthly magazine," no band seemed to carry more potential to bring this music into the mainstream with its integrity intact than Old 97's. Solidifying its four-man lineup in Dallas in 1993, the band -- an amalgamation of the Meat Puppets, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, The Replacements, Merle Haggard, and yeah, okay, The Beatles -- released a couple of albums on Chicago's fine "insurgent country" label Bloodshot Records before being called up to the majors. The trio of albums they made for Elektra Records circa 1997-2001 (including Too Far to Care, widely regarded as their pinnacle) mostly delighted critics and fans, but failed to move units in major-label volume.