REVIEW: Steve Earle, El Corazon (E-Squared/Warner)
- Tracey Bleile
I was *never* a country music fan - I found it easy to ignore and/or put down. It was only until I started getting turned on to the Americana that was bubbling up from every little pocket it could survive that I started to appreciate where this music came from and what gave it that edge. I learned that what drove me crazy about country, is the same thing that plagues any genre of *popular* music - it is an ultra-commercial venture, slickly marketed and force-fed in the same pretty little package, over and over. I'm one of those people who will take heart-rending lyrics and an angry guitar, no matter how lost the voices, no matter how rough the production work, over perfection, every time.
What feeds my disgust with commercialism is the constant recurrence of the story of a rising star who isn't guided right the first time, and then with no one to support them, plummets back to earth. The hard lesson is learned, and the only way to start over again is from the very beginning, with more modest hopes. Steve Earle has lived this story like one of his own songs - just like a country song tragedy. He had his real shot at the glamour and glitz of Nashville at one point in his career, but consequently, his success begat a bad drug habit and he did a stretch of hard time that stopped everything. When he found his way back, it was through hard work; by constantly writing, playing, and lending his assistance wherever it is needed, in order to find his place.
Earle's current release, El Corazon doesn't display the splashy strength and evenness of his 1995 comeback I Feel Alright, but just as the title suggests, it's got lots o' heart. With his twangy tenor that on ballads like "Christmas In Washington" he knows how to let his voice trail off on the ends of lines with a rumbling breathiness that suggests being close to tears. He takes all the cliches of country songs and makes them real-life situations again. What keeps El Corazon working is his tendency to throw in different flavorings from everything that is intimately tied to country origins, within the space of two songs. You see how different, yet how connected the ideas are when he reaches for the Tex-Mex spice in "You Know The Rest" and then with nary a pause, turns up the flame and throws in a generous handful of gritty blues and straight ahead rock in "N.Y.C."
Other tracks that stand out have an immediate accessibility - especially his songs that pull in more instrumentation like the violins (and the sung accompaniment of Siobhan Kennedy) in "Poison Lovers" or the Hammond and brass in "Telephone Road" , and display the sensibility of a more commercial act. I think if the Traveling Wilburys would ever reform, he could be their wild long-lost second cousin, and fit right in. If the more straight-ahead country songs end up feeling a little out of place on this album, it's only because he's a lot more interesting when it's just the lonely troubadour and his guitar, or the leader of making a big rambunctious sound.
If success were measured on the true scale of having the ability to do what you love, and the freedom to keep on doing it, then Steve Earle is richer than he could ever dream possible.
