But where one succeeds in coaxing nods of recognition and a lopsided smile or two, the other surrenders its narrative integrity to duplicitous moralizing. You can almost hear his bemused appreciation for this turn of events and the peculiarly creative effort of baby-raising in the album’s few counter-current tunes.įaith and redemption taunt both the book and the vinyl. Earle has recently remarried and late in life appears surprised to welcome a new son into the world. Earle’s father passed away as he wrote many of the album’s songs, which may have contributed to the gloom of mortality that hangs over both works. The two efforts share a name, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”(lifted from a Hank Williams tune) and a wizened view of the world and man’s often sad and lonely place struggling in it. In a burst of multitasking hubris, Earle released an album and a novel together. He has lately taken a shot at acting with a role in HBO’s “Treme” and recently added “novelist” to his impressive C.V. As a singer-songwriter who kept throwing grit and squalor into that overproduced candy shop Nashville called country, Steve Earle has had a hand in protecting the authenticity of a unique American musical tradition and in birthing a new one-the more contemporary iteration of “Alt-Country” or “Americana” music.
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