Details
Track Listing
1. Transcendental Blues
2. Everyone's in Love With You
3. Another Town
4. I Can Wait
5. Boy Who Never Cried, The
6. Steve's Last Ramble
7. Galway Girl, The
8. Lonelier Than This
9. Wherever I Go
10. When I Fall
11. I Don't Want to Lose You Yet
12. Halo 'Round the Moon
13. Until the Day I Die
14. All of My Life
15. Over Yonder (Jonathan's Song)
| Details | | Producer: | Twangtrust | | Distributor: | E1 Distribution (USA) | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel: Steve Earle (vocals, guitar, harmonium, Mini-Moog synthesizer); Darrell Scott (vocals, banjo); Tim O'Brien (vocals, mandolin); Tom Littlefield, Stacey Earle (vocals); Doug Lancio (guitar); David Steele (mandola); Casey Driessen (fiddle); Benmont Tench (piano, organ); Dan Metz, Ray Kennedy, Kelley Looney (bass); Dennis Crouch (upright bass); Will Rigby, Patrick Earle (drums, percussion); Ron Vance (drums).
Includes liner notes by Steve Earle.
TRANSCENDENTAL BLUES was nominated for the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
On his fifth album since sobering up in the mid-'90s, Steve Earle avoids striking any sour notes as he mixes disparate musical ingredients including Bill Monroe, RUBBER SOUL, Irish reels and sturdy folk-rock into an eclectic and innovative stew of stellar songwriting. This country rebel's thirst for musical challenge allows him to include the high lonesome sound of heavenly harmonies and whining fiddle, such as on the thoroughly bluegrass "Until The Day I Die," on the same album as the Indian-like mysticism of the title track (featuring members of Philly rock band Marah).
Earle's collaborative instincts find him joined by Irish musician Sharon Shannon and her band. "Steve's Last Ramble" and "The Galway Girl" both overflow with bouzouki, fiddle, accordion and harp to form TRANSCENDENTAL BLUES' breezy core. Elsewhere, Earle and sister Stacey make like a modern day Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris on "When I Fall," while the Beatles-esque melancholy of "The Boy Who Never Cried" and the grinding garage rock of "All My Life," make for an interesting juxtaposition. Earle's most personal note this time around is "Over Yonder (Jonathan's Song)," an anti-capital punishment narrative based on an execution the singer witnessed first hand.
Industry Reviews
...There is much to suggest that a little less hair and a little more gut are matters of nuance,, and nuance is what it's eventually all about....it is socked with good things...making loyalists glad they've been on board for the whole dang oeuvre...
No Depression (05/01/2000)
4.5 out of 5 - Th ebest of Earle's career is a brilliant melange of rootsy country, blazing rock, Irish folk, uptempo bluegrass and Beatlesque pop...
Down Beat (03/01/2001)
Included in Magnet's 20 Best Albums of 2000 - ...The crowning achievement of Nashville's king of the road...
Magnet (01/01/2001)
...He bares his spiritual chest...with a Lennonesque honesty and a vocal delivery that increasingly resembles Tom Petty's sub-Dylan sneer...
Mojo (07/01/2000)
4 stars out of 5 - ...There is no doubt that his songwriting chops just keep getting better...proving his mastery of every country-rock style...
Q (07/01/2000)
...He's thrown open the gates. Walking through the psychedelic title track, the RUBBER SOUL-ish pop, the garage rock, and the lovely Eire-meets-Tennessee 'The Galway Girl', BLUES is his musical road map... - Rating: A-
Entertainment Weekly (06/09/2000)
7 out of 10 - ...The record sounds great...[his] most ambitious yet....[He] explores some well-traveled roads: Beatlesque psychedelia; Irish reels; bluegrass....and, of course, the guns-blazin' badass stompers...
Spin (07/01/2000)
3.5 stars out of 5 - ...An intermittenly twangy, often trippy and, yes, generally transcendant outing....Earle keeps his material hewed to a basic theme - the universality of the blues - and finds that home truth everywhere his muse takes him...
Rolling Stone (06/22/2000)
|
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
All rights reserved.
