Purplegrass
Just over a year after his album Second Hand Heart, reviewed here, Yoakam releases another, this a declared
‘bluegrass’ focus, revisiting his songs mainly and adding plenty of fiddle and
mandolin and rousing harmony accompaniments, but in many respects these simply
continue to present his totally distinctive sound, primarily in the vocal with
its Dwight-yodel-twang [and there is a posting on the net How do I learn to sing like Dwight Yoakam? where people actually
give advice….].
So these are largely older familiar songs liked loads then
and just as much now remade, mandolin strums and plucks and fiddle rolls
enhancing to their different effect – the vocals of Yoakam and band absolutely
crisp and to the foreground and that is their brilliant collective strength. Sad, Sad Music for example is mandolin
strummed and banjo finger-picked beneath the twang-rich lead of Dwight and the
tight bluegrass harmonising, the fiddle doing a twirl. Two Doors Down resonates to Yoakam’s echoing singing, as it always
has, those note-end upward vocal flips a sonic singing that defines Dwight
Country. Same again with his classic Guitars,
Cadillacs. The bass vocal from a bluegrass barbershop quartet adds depth to
the tenor twang on Home For Sale. There's the comic percussion in an otherwise taut Please, Please Baby.
The only album ‘surprise’ then is closer Purple Rain, an impromptu cover,
apparently, of Prince’s song. Yin Yang, I’m sure, for listeners. It rests
perfectly within its bluegrass framing for me, a mixture perhaps of the
excellence of songwriting that carries it wherever it goes; the distinctiveness
that is Yoakam making it sit so easy in his singing [assuming one likes, as I
do], and the pathos of Prince’s untimely death that still resides within our embrace
of this dark year for such leavings.
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