Paste Magazine June/July 2010 : Page 77
BROKEN HEARTS & DIRTY WINDOWS: SONGS OF JOHN PRINEVENICE IS SINKING N E W M U S I C VARIOUS ARTISTS Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine OH BOY RELEASE DATE: JUNE 22 At last, the trib-ute he deserves The songs of dirt-road troubador John Prine are malleable—simple, elegiac tales of people living out simple lives. They're easy tunes to cover, which means this smartly-assembled tribute album is long overdue. It draws from the legion of neo-folk acolytes Prine has helped shuffle into the spotlight, with the Avett Brothers, My Morning Jacket and the Drive-By Truckers, among others, scribbling the margins of his well-thumbed volumes in their own shorthand. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver welcomes "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)" into his misty, distant world, and Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band follow up with a ram-shackle "Wedding Day in Funeralville.” Elsewhere, Old Crow Medicine Show nails the gorgeous, bruising "Angel From Montgomery," Josh Ritter ambles through "Mexican Home" and Jim James hangs his head low on the heartbroken "All The Best," all providing graceful spins on the American experience and Prine's sharpened take on the impossible mess that humans make of it. JEFF VRABEL VENICE IS SINKING Sand & Lines: The Georgia The-ater Sessions ONE PERCENT PRESS RELEASE DATE: JUNE 15 An atmospheric tribute to an Athens landmark Sand & Lines is a haunted album. It was Recorded in Athens’ famed Georgia Theatre— and nudged into exis-tence by Theater owner Wilmot “Wil” Greene, who volunteered the venue as studio space—a little more than a year before the venerable music 8.0 house went up in flames in June 2009. Using Cowboy Junkies’ legend-ary Trinity Session as inspiration, the local dream-pop group set up camp around two micro-phones for four days, holding themselves to a live blueprint with no overdubs or extraneous studio effects. The result is somber, pastoral and startlingly visceral, cap-turing the careful chaos of their performances; Dense, soaked-wool guitar textures hang in the air over stately trumpets on their cover of Galaxie 500’s “Tug-boat"; a cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" delivers despondent violins, soft harmonies and crashing electric guitar. The Geor-gia Theatre may be in ashes, but its legacy will echo through the rafters every time this stunning live collection is played. MATT FINK 8.1
