Kort Invariable Heartache. Cortney Tidwell was born in Nashville. TS Eliot was born in St Louis. Someone I know that walks around carrying a very heavy book filled with poems by Allen Ginsberg is probably not aware that Cortney Tidwell was born in Nashville. Possibly he is aware of TS Eliot's birthplace, on Locust St. I don't know. What has TS Eliot to do with this record? Nothing at all. My middle name is Allen. I just once had an argument with a student over where TS Eliot was born, convinced, they were, of his having been English. He may have gone to the World's fair, seen Esther and Rose. By her birthright Cortney should be royalty in Nashville. But she isn't. She makes brilliantly odd country records that mix in shades of Joy Division, Patsy Cline and This Mortal Coil to amazing effect and as such she could frighten everyone in Nashville. My brother lives in Nashville and while I have never asked him directly I can sense his own paranoia over running into Cortney, such is the luminescence of her spectre that haunts that particular metropolis. Or not. Her grandfather ran Chart records! I know, that didn't mean anything to me either. It does mean things to some, those more important than you and me. It is the reason for this record which is composed of Chart Records covers. On the first track it sounds a lot like a Lambchop record. Kurt Wagner has a distinctive voice but then Cortney sings, sigh, so incredible, so effortless, so country. You still imagine her sitting there with a "Meat is Murder" tee shirt on while singing but the idea of royal lineage could possibly mean something. I am not a budding eugenicist, no, but there could be something of the nurture end versus the nature end, because this is better than 99% of the country music you have heard in your life. Really. Well, that could be hyperbole, I am prone to it. It is confined to my fingers however, in person I tend to have a permanently dour countenance that provokes the people I meet into the deepest furrow of sadness, so inescapable. They would need this record cast from the heavens as a lifeline, a good tiding, things have been worse for many others and yet beauty comes from despair, on occasion. Their voices mesh nicely, hers the sound of an angel, his the stumbling regular man, the forgotten man. Cast not from clay from some recipe for Golems and ubermensch but from a zygote bathed in the mundanity of the every day. Gorgeous. This entire record is gorgeous. Second track, more Lambchop-ism, steel guitars, brushed drums, Kurt Wagner. I don't understand it when people describe their music taste as loving everything but country. Even in the gloss of your Martina McBride's and Sara Evans' and Taylor Swift there is brilliance to be found. This is amazing. "lips don't make a sound, just pretend she's not around, or she'll know that she still means everything to me". Heartbreaking, then the violin, crushing. I have resigned myself to a life alone. Me with my pop songs and long books on the Spanish Civil War, the cause for my recent allusions to La Pasionaria, Angel Castano, etc...I've made it up to the beginning of the Civil War just today. I am very excited. Third track, A Special Day, the first Cortney solo piece. It's an ordinary track, but her voice is spellbinding, "today the world is smiling, it don't push and shove, the busy city seems so calm, when you're in love". The city that we live in does always seems calm. But I am not in love. I hoped to be. It is just that emotions seem subdued, hidden in unknown catacombs, allowed to escape free to the ether because of the usual lack of cloud cover. We had nearly 5 inches of rain in two weeks. It was marvelous, I miss the all day rainy days so much, possibly more than anything from my life in Michigan, and we had a surfeit of them. But ah, it was not to last, now we must wait for the Arizona monsoon to begin, pray for a dew point of 55 degrees in Phoenix , Arizona, relieve my parched skin if not my desiccated heart. Fourth track, a marvelous duet, Picking Wild Mountain Berries, so much fun. It's sprightly and jaunty and bouncy and the lyrics are absurdly country. is this the country that hardens hearts? It is ok for Beyonce to vacuously prance about about girls running the world but giggling over "skinny dipping in a cement pond" is beyond the pale. Madness. The world is mad. I keep running into people who seem to believe that public service or working for a non-profit is the pinnacle of human achievement. This in a time of so much suffering for people who long only to be paid an honest wage for an honest day's labour. Is it not more noble to start a company and gasp! make a profit so that your company can grow and employ hundreds of people that can support their families, that can buy jet-skis and compact discs to help other people support their families? What is the glory of a government job? It isn't sacrifice. it is overhead. it is security. I don't know. people are led about by the nose so easily. Think for yourself, make a country record influenced by Blue Monday, do it. Next track, a beautiful sad country ballad, Cortney on voice, the music hushed and churchy, and the crescendo provided by the depth of her intonation, the emotion of her conviction, the trepidation of the accompaniment. Marvelous. I had a Peter Jefferies moment there, my apologies. What if these songs actually meant anything at all to me? I would be a wreck. Now even as a dispassionate observer of human emotion I can subjectively comment on their objective brilliance. or some such. The end, beautiful. Next track, pianos and pedal steel, Cortney. Her father also worked at Chart Records. I have never heard of any of the artists. Are you a big fan of Shorty Bacon? I am almost certain that I would be, if I knew who he was. Possibly he is a woman. Do you know LaWanda Lindsey? I don't either, but I love her name. With a name like that you can probably bring the pain in an authentic seeming country tune. Cortney has taken the lead on the last few, Kurt Wagner is a smart man. Is he still installing hardwood floors in between Lambchop gigs? I sort of lost touch with Lambchop around the time when they started covering songs by Dump. I am anti-Yo La Tengo. In all things. They did a fair job of making a Dump song rather lovely, but by then it wa a question of judgement. The friends you keep, etc...I don't have any friends. This is a difficulty when it comes to a Saturday evening. This is a duet, Kurt in very very deadpan mode, he does sing, there is a tremor in his voice, it's delicate and lovely even as it's creaky and unadorned. Cortney in the spotlight, magical. Are they touring for this record? I could look. Ah, they are playing in Berlin, very near my birthday, how very convenient. I think the word has been out on Denver for a very long time because bands I would like to see rarely ever visit the front range. Are they still receiving email from Barbra Streisand telling them to boycott us because our insensitivity to Culex mosquitoes? I don't know. Now, a goofy-ish number, his voice is so indistinguishable from Lambchop. No? Is this sexual? The chorus "penetration" sung liltingly. Ha. Chart Records released a fair number of records. They could be at this for some time. or there could be other pairings, Harriet Wheeler and the guy from Moose, Kristen Hersh and the guy from Mojave 3, Caroline Crawley and the guy from the Renderers. It would be a marvelous series, I could be curator. Comically deep vocals at the start of the next track, then it softns in the light, "my life without April, is like the next year without spring". It's romantic and touching and this is what most country entails. Sure you have the insanity of Toby Keith wrapping himself in the flag while acting the part of boorish dullard who exemplifies all of the worst things of the flag, but then there is Suds in the Bucket which doesn't appear to be about anything at all but so wonderfully does it execute its vapidity that we don't mind at all. This record is just gorgeous. I am not sure when it was officially released. I "borrowed" it last year, I've been loving it all winter long, caressing it softly, turning over on my pillow and saying good morning. That's a bit lascivious. I am lying. It's a rainy, night-time drive to Cheyenne kind of record. I haven't had many journeys of that sort recently. Some innuendo arises again, ho, look at my pun. "I can't sleep with you...on my mind". Clever. Cortney in top form, as always. I've suddenly found the motivation to write a great deal lately. I sit down and just keep typing and so perhaps the quality is lessened, I had such high standards in the past, ha, but I am finding that it is good to discipline myself by writing especially as I am armed with the knowledge that no one at all reads this and yet I still persevere. it has spilled into writing for other reasons, writing with the intention of others enjoying what I have written, of editing things that I have written so that it seems not completely incoherent. Music inspires me more than anything else. I am convinced of this. Second to last track, another duet. Again, marvelous. Are they playing on Broadway in Nashville? Broadway in Nashville is such an amazing location, all week long there are live bands in bars all along the length of the street. The dreamers and schemers all in one room. When we were there there was the ethereal chanteuse part-time bartender/part-time singer songwriter, there was a Alannah Myles/Madonna going crazy on a steel guitar and chewing beer bottles in her perfect teeth and the boring overweight guys that seemed to be the most popular of all. Why is it that most of the best selling country acts tend to be male? Is it misogyny? Why is it that country starlets need to look like models and the guys can be fat, unhygienic and born with the face of a capybara? Last track, the sad send-off. A song for my current state of mind "it looks like a good night for crying, but what good would missing you do, if you're gonna stay as gone as your are, well who'll help me find me someone new". Sad. Cortney in full heartache mode. I feel like I can call her Cortney and not Ms Tidwell. Or Mrs? She is married. Her last album was about her husband and her son. I bet her son is wearing a Cabaret Voltaire tee shirt as we type.