REVIEW: Chris Wall, Tainted Angel (Cold Spring)
- Daniel Aloi
If you think Hank Williams Jr. hasn't done anything good since before he cut the Monday Night Football theme and that all the great barroom singers are either gone or shadows of what they were, there's at least one of the breed still carrying that flame and burning down the honky-tonks with it.
Although the outlaw movement has been thought long dead or relegated to obscurity by the changing commercial tides of country music, Texan Chris Wall is (cliche time) the real deal, a man out of time, a honky-tonk hero. His entertaining, to-the-bone songs were probably inspired early on by the music of the jukebox joints I frequented in Texas nearly 20 years ago, before everything turned to formula-driven ballads and reheated classic rock with faint hints of fiddles and steel (you know, to "keep it country").
Bearded, black-hatted and with hard-won experience and the courage of his convictions in every note he sings, Wall hits hard with honest revelations in his songs of drinking, driving, dancing and loving. Especially loving what's lost, whether it's a memory (in "Three Across") of barreling down the highway in better times blasting "Born to Run" on the pickup's radio, or of a woman in the traditional sounding "I Never Got Over Losing You," keeping his brave face on and the music upbeat. And sincere -- he isn't afraid to admit what led him to his current condition.
Wall gives us a great cowboy love song in "Waltz to Cheyenne," an unknown legend in "Dylan Montana's Last Ride," bravado as big as the Lone Star state in "Half of What Killed Elvis," and straight-out, ungarnished rock'n'roll in the hammering twang of "No Sweat."
This is the true sound of foundation-shaking salvation that Jason and the Scorchers were forever trying to call up with their Hank Sr.-meets-Van Halen workouts. As Wall sees it, there are criteria for great country songs, in stories "set somewhere between exuberance and desperation." His gruff baritone (think Merle Haggard) and self-awareness convey the latter, his band and optimism the former.
Recording a year ago in Austin, Wall found his way to a true sound in a crack band, Reckless Kelly -- with Cody and Willy Braun, brothers Wall's known since they were kids. You can hear how close they are in just about every bar of music they play together.
Although they put out a more conventional, with-the-times country record of their own (_Millican) on Wall's Cold Spring label in 1997, here they rock out and twang hard, as if they're playing a bar on the hottest, drunkest night of the year and out to prove that the music is worth something much more than formulas and fame.
It's good to have someone like Wall, not too settled in midlife to be kicked in the ass by a young band, to bring back a little of the music's old magic, fire and fury. Even if no one else picks up his torch and carries it to Nashville, he's a singular reminder of what makes country music great, and he'll keep running with it.
For more on Chris Wall and Reckless Kelly: http://www.coldspring.com, http://www.chriswall.com or e-mail: music (at) coldspring.com
