Album of the Week: Dwight Yoakam Second Hand Heart

Has Dwight Yoakam always rocked this hard?

Does country have some redeeming qualities?

Has my whole life been a lie?

These are the types of surprising questions you ask yourself when you come across something or someone great in a genre that you'd previously written off.

One of the best things about taking an eclectic approach to music (or any art medium, really) is that you can never really turn your back on any genre – definitions in music tend to be fluid things, and there's no telling when someone will came along and completely change the game. Sometimes these figures change it for everyone (your Miles Davis, your Bob Dylans, your Kanye Wests), but there are also artists who change things for you as a listener – artists who make you appreciate sounds or nuances to a genre you never did before.

For me and country music, Dwight Yoakam may just be that game changer.

A little background: country music has never really been my thing. As a kid in the 90s I'm fairly certain I listened to Garth Brooks (because, judging by the amount of people I saw wildin' about his return to touring, everybody my age did), though I couldn't tell you any of his songs now. For the longest time the only country I liked were the classics – Patsy Cline (still my favorite country singer, full stop), Johnny Cash and Hank Williams – and some of the early 2000s outlaw country – Hank III and Shooter Jennings. In recent years I've found a lot to like in the "newer" generation – Eric Church, Sturgill Simpson, Kacey Musgraves, Jamey Johnson and Miranda Lambert – but tended to skip everything between Cash and Lambert's Four the Record.

My one outlier was Yoakam's 2012 album 3 Pears, which hooked me hard on first, second and twenty-fifth listens. For my money, it's an underrated country gem that nowhere near enough young people pay attention to. Not knowing much about Yoakam at the time (he was just a name I'd heard country fans mention), I thought perhaps it was one of those rare great albums in the second half of an artist's career.

Now I'm forced to grapple with the first question I posed above, and after listening to Yoakam's fifteenth (!!!) studio album, Second Hand Heart, I think I have an answer – fuck yes.

Yoakam's second album is called Hillbilly Deluxe, a name that could just as fittingly apply to Second Hand Heart, which continues to embody what a producer told him when working on his first album in the 1980's – a sound "so hillbilly, they're going to call it rock 'n' roll."*

The rock vibe is there from the word go on the album, with "In Another World's" furious acoustic guitar riff and Tom Petty-esque electric guitar lines. In the middle of the song Yoakam breaks out harmony work that wouldn't be out of place on a Beach Boys track, and throughout the number he shows off his vocal range by going low and then sending his voice soaring above the music. He also has this kind of hiccup thing he does on a few words that is perhaps the most country thing I've ever heard.

He keeps up the strong vocal work on "She," wonderfully yelping his way through a plea for a woman to share herself and her heart with him. The song is hook-filled anthem that ably represents so much of what makes Second Hand Heart great – fantastic guitar work, an infectious melody and some stellar vocals.

Yoakam has the tears-in-your-beers front covered as well, with slower songs like "Dreams of Clay" and "Off Your Mind" – the latter of which is a right out of the Hank Williams stylebook and it's fantastic. History even gets a rockabilly update in Yoakam's Chuck Berry-infused cover of "Man of Constant Sorrow."

Guitar work is front and center on the album, and Yoakam taps into the style of some of his peers – specifically Tom Petty and John Mellencamp – who came up in the late 70s and early 80s. I'm not sure if this kind of folk-guitar rock is the secret carry-over from the 80s (as opposed to say, whatever the hell all that hair metal was), but Yoakam certainly treats it as if that's the case.

Album closer "V's of Birds" starts out like it's going to be some piano-driven weeper, then morphs into a sound-alike of "What A Wonderful World," before it settles into what it actually is – the prettiest damn song here. It has the most diverse instrumentation – not only incorporating the piano, but also an organ and mandolin – and Yoakam gives the lyrics the perfect lift and melancholy.

Yoakam was touring with Eric Church earlier this year as the opener, and I think that's a great match – Church is one of the most interesting artists modern country has to offer, and hopefully many of the young people who go to the shows (and Church himself) paid attention when he hit the stage. Yoakam shows all the signs of being in a legendary album run, and we're all lucky to be around for it.

Second Hand Heart is out on Warner Brothers.

*(The quote came from a lovely piece by NPR's Ann Powers that you can read here.)

Album of the Week: The Lone Bellow Then Came the Morning

Not every week in the year will feature some seminal album that is going to keep everyone listening and talking for months to come. It just can't. In a world where every week sees the release of at least half a dozen new albums, it's inevitable there will be weeks where nothing earth-shaking comes out.

All of this is not to say that the albums released on these weeks are bad, per se, but rather most will come and go with making much of a splash. In such a week The Lone Bellow's second album, Then Came the Morning, fits the bill perfectly – a completely agreeable jaunt through the Americana sonic landscape with some interesting digressions.

The Lone Bellow (Brian Elmquist, Kanene Doheney Pipkin and Zach Williams) quietly arrived on the scene in 2013 with a lovely little record that was firm-footed in the southern folk tradition that has inspired so many bands, from Mumford and Sons to The Lumineers. On that album, the trio resisted the big sound expansion that the aforementioned groups had embraced and instead kept it small and intimate.

On Then Came the Morning they go big without going bigger, thanks to The National's Aaron and Bryce Dessner, who serve as producer and instrumentalist, respectively. Their fingerprints are all over the album, but never in an obvious way. It's all little touches, added horns or strings here and there, which create a deeper sound for the group.

From the word "go" it's evident this is a bigger record – listen to the opening harmony work that kicks-off "Then Came the Morning," the album's first song. It's rich and glorious – at once reminiscent of Fleet Foxes' best work without actually sounding anything like them – and Bryce's strings contribute beautifully without being in any way overwhelming. It reminds me a lot of a piece of classical music and it is definitely my favorite opening track of the year so far.

Williams' vocals are front and center for the first quarter of the album, which works because he has one of those voices that will immediately remind you of someone (for me it's Glen Hansard) but when he uses it to lift the lyrics, like on "Fake Roses," it's really something.

The band still has those quiet, acoustic-driven folk ballads down pat, as evidenced by Pipkin's lovely turn on "Call to War" – the way she takes her voice to just a slightly higher register on lyrics like "Til the Southern wind puts me six feet down/My feet will march to holy ground," will absolutely floor you. The guitar and piano-driven "Telluride" is also a wonderfully simple traveling song that cuts to the quick.

The Lone Bellow is clearly intent on expanding not only their sound but their well of influences, or at least they are more interested in sampling from a broader spectrum of genres. This leads to tracks like "Watch Over Us" which is reminiscent of Basement Tapes-era Bob Dylan and The Band – I would actually love to have heard The Band take a crack at this in an alternate universe where all the members are all still with us.

Also extremely successful is their foray into country on "Diners" which name-checks George Jones and Johnny Cash's classic "Cry! Cry! Cry!" The band builds its sound verse by verse, and by the end it's a real country weeper, complete with a perfect piano line and pedal guitars.

Less successful is "Heaven Don't Call Me Home," which sees the trio trying on the blues with a guitar-riff taken right out of Gary Clark Jr.'s "Don’t OweYou A Thang." It's not a bad effort, nor is "If you Don't Love Me" (another blues number) but these songs don't play to the band's strengths – beautiful vocal work and shimmering instrumentation. Still, I'll never fault artists for trying something out of their comfort zone, even if the effort is less than stellar.

It's too early to tell if Then Came the Morning will stick around in my head or merely pass like the snows of winter, but right now it's a comforting creation that occasionally makes me stop whatever I'm doing and listen with greater attention. That's more than enough to earn it the top spot for the week.  

Then Came the Morning is out on Descendant.