The most difficult pieces for me to do are those about my top 5 bands. It would be really easy for me to just devolve into fanatical gushing but I feel that would be slightly irresponsible to you. The flip side of that is that it’s really easy to get overly critical of one of your favorite bands new albums. I mean, new songs are strange and foreign, they’re hard to singalong to and the album just isn’t as comfortable as the last. I can’t count how many albums I’ve not liked on first listen that are in heavy rotation come the next week. In all honesty, the new Old Crow Medicine Show album, Tennessee Pusher, fell into that category.
Tennessee Pusher has a much more restrained feel to it than it’s predecessors. The band had elected to switch from Dave Rawling, who had produced all other OCMS albums, to Don Was. While Don Was may have produced some legends such as Dylan and the Stones I think he was a little too heavy handed with Old Crow. It almost seems like he tried to make them sound like a radio ready country band instead of the string band bluegrass street performers they are. That’s not to allude that it’s a bad cd…it’s just different. My first pass though netted 3 songs I loved, one I hated and nine I was indifferent to. A week later and I’ve really started to warm up to the album. If someone wanted me to sum it up in a sentence I’d say this: Big Iron World is for Saturday night and Tennessee Pusher is for Sunday mornings and both are essential listening in their jobs.
So, go pick the cd up today but with hold judgment until next Tuesday.
Old Crow Medicine Show – Alabama High-Test
Old Crow Medicine Show – Hotel in Memphis
Old Crow Medicine Show – Caroline
Old Crow Medicine Show’s Official Site, Old Crow Medicine Show on myspace, Buy Tennessee Pusher
Autopsy IV
Part time blogger. Full time hater.
[...] vandaag weer moeten we de Americana-liefhebbers onder u verwijzen naar de uitstekende site van NineBullet. Dit maalt meent men daar het nieuwe album Tennessee Pusher van de Old Crow Medicine Show te [...]
[...] before on our Dutch site 3vandaag we have to notify the Americana-lovers among you again that NineBullet has posted an item about yet another great album. This time it appears that they felt that the [...]
I’m with you on OCMS being a top five band for me, although I just came home with the cd and will pop it in after the kids go to bed.
If Pusher turns out to be a Sunday morning cd, that’s fine, they’re just covering the days of the week.
yeah, it may grow into more over time…I’ve only had it a week but it’s so much more mellow that the other cds I just can’t see it being the one I reach to when I’m ready to raise a ruckus.
My reaction was a bit different: loved the record from the first play. But I may have been swayed by the show. Even the mediocre songs (plus that one that I’m thinking everyone hates) on the album were ass-kicking when performed live. After show glow, I guess.
plus that one that I’m thinking everyone hates
highway halo…
I was going to go with Humdinger.
I love Humdinger. Really love it. But I think the most moving and wonderful song is Methanphetemine. Painful to listen to, but excruciatingly truthful.
I love it.
This release has so many layers. Im proud of the boys.
It’s not that I didn’t love “Big Iron World” or “OCMS,” but they seem to keep drifting away from the old timey jug band I fell in love with in 2000ish. But I’m a bluegrass fan who grew up in the middle of nowhere, so you know. They just seem to be getting folkier with each release.
Again, not that I didn’t love those other albums (I did!), but it’s not quite the same as the plucky, quirky jug band ditties from “Eutaw.”
That said, it’s also nice to see a band mature and not be afraid to go in different directions.
Humdinger is horrible. It’s almost as if they said, “Crap, we need a party song. Throw something together!” Completely contrived and lacking the chutzpah of Tear it Down or Minglewood Blues.
btw, completely unrelated but did anyone else love Don’t Ride That Horse? My friends hated it and I thought it was great.
“Don’t Ride That Horse” is a great jam. It’s no “James River Blues,” but it’s still a hell of a song.
I love the fuck outta Don’t Ride That Horse.
Don’t Ride that horse always comes on towards the end of a long night of party’n at my house. It’s right up there with Wagon Wheel and Cocain Habit.
wow, i love don’t ride that horse..it just has something about it. It’s my fav song from them. Oh and wagon wheel is awesome too.
I’m in a band that is accused of stealing old crow’s act… and for some measure, we did…
I really think you have it backwards. Tennessee Pusher is Saturday Night and the more politically neutral Big Iron World is Sunday morning.
Personally, I tend to enjoy albums more that I have to work at a bit. But even as active listeners, sometimes we Pine for another Wagon Wheel, when the reality is that most bands are lucky even to have one monster song that takes a life of its own any more. (yes the stones and the beetles and pink floyd are really dead.)
We have to be resigned to a HIP HOP world and cult status for string band music, which is fine by me, but we have to be forgiving when we expect a traditional country audience who listened to Wagon Wheel, can’t get into what Tennessee Pusher Offers.
But this is where Don Was and Old Crowe I believe are being really smart. The in fact are old time musicians, singing about what the times offer in the darkness of the human spirit. Old time jug music was in reality the Rap of the day, singing about Cocaine, Drinking, Cavorting, and even Wife Beating.
Taken in that light, Tennessee Pusher is a true Jug Band record, put in context with todays Cocaine, which is Meth of course. Throwing some well crafted songs about a Hustler who Hustles your heart. (My personal favorite).
And the before mentioned Humdinger, which I can’t for the life of me figure our why someone would hate this song. Trust me, when my band kick that tune out, the reaction will be as expected. Fists pumping in the air, and a huge celebration that ensues.
These are songs for the festival campers who party to the extreem, around a campfire, getting lit up, loosing a few marbles, getting sentimental, and of course trying to get laid…
I love the fact they haven’t gone country. They have in fact gone where the people are and know exactly who want to party with them.
This is a great great record for this reason alone.
I know I am a little late to the ball game here, but I’ve been listening to this record good and hard the last few days after having it on my computer for a few months now. It’s easily slower then the rest of the Old Crow records I have, but this may be my favorite record, overall, so far. The stand out track, at least in my opinion, is the last song on the record, “Lift Him Up.” I’ve always been partial to songs such as this one, songs that are sorta depressing but make you feel good inside at the same time (I don’t really know how else to put it). It’s songs like this that help me through rough days in my life when I’m angry, frustrated and otherwise out of the ordinary. I think it’s a great way to finish a record that seems, at least in a way, centered around Meth and it’s evils. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m just a little right, but either way, this is a good record. No doubt about that.