Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Bloodshot in Earshot

For 11 years, Bloodshot Records has been home to no-nonsense acts who record beautifully jacked-up tunes. Bloodshot sums up that tradition in their new compilation, For a Decade of Sin: 11 Years of Bloodshot Records.

As Popmatters put it,

What's to be made of Bloodshot Record's 11th anniversary compilation, For a Decade of Sin? It's not a retrospective, culling seminal tracks from the first decade of the self-proclaimed "insurgent country" label's releases, but rather all new/unreleased music. And a good chunk of the 42 artists represented on this compilation aren't even members of the Bloodshot family! Not that these facts makes the album any less enjoyable, but still: Weird.


The weirdness lives on.

The Meat Purveyors' Little White Pills (mp3) starts as a southern rocking foot-stomper, but gets groggy when the the lyrics turn to the pills:

(allegro)
I was always tired
I was always blue
I found something that'll cure my ills
I'm talkin' about those little white pills

(adagio)
Those little white pills got me feelin' fine
They hurt my stomach and sharpen my mind...


Porter Hall, Tennessee lament fallen friends in a cover of Jim Carroll's People Who Died (mp3):

Teddy sniffed some glue, he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-Nine
Kathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
on 26 reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
He looked like 65 when he died
He was a friend of mine

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died


And Nora O'Connor's Two Way Action (mp3) is simply gorgeous.

It's available at Amazon.com for 13.99...that's 42 songs for 14 bucks. At 33 cents per track, it's a steal.

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