HOME |
DINING |
MOVIES |
LIVE SHOWS |
ARTS |
UPCOMING EVENTS
ARCHIVES |
ABOUT |
ADVERTISE |
CONTACT |
DISTRIBUTION
entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
<<
Donna The Buffalo
|
Main
|
Hands-On Children's Museum
>>
|
|
|
by jon bosworth
jaxvillain@yahoo.com
Hank Williams III is my favorite Hank Williams of them all. That’s not quite fair, my favorite thing about Wall Street in Five Points is that they have Hank Sr. on the juke box, but Hank III is representing the natural evolution of country music. Presenting an avid hatred for country pop, Hank III’s new album has traditional country songs with traditional instrumentation, to create a sound that is authentically country, but he has an attitude that is far from traditional in Nashville.
|
|
In the South you see rebel rousers with their confederate flags and Dixie Outfitters shirts rolling all over town in giant pickup trucks splattered with mud. These young hillbillies are full of venom and anger, and proud of their heritage. This attitude is not represented in the standard ballads of popular country. So Hank Williams III has stepped up to that line with his new double album Straight to Hell.
While he is open about his affinity for traditional country music in songs like ‘Country Heroes’ and ‘My Drinking Problem,’ he is also incorporating a new identity, much like his grandfather did, by being the bad boy of country music. Covered with tattoos and singing incessantly about his drug and alcohol abuse, Hank is unashamed of the fact that he is not fulfilling the role Nashville might expect of one of country music’s legendary offspring.
Putting the ‘Dick in Dixie’ is only one of the achievements Straight to Hell accomplishes. The second CD on this two-disc album is titled simply ‘Louisiana Stripes’ and only features two tracks. The first track is a beautiful, grass-roots country song about a man in prison in Louisiana for killing his wife. Following that song is country’s most avant-garde noise art experimentation to date. With this second disc, not only does Hank III show that a country artists can actually have a larger artistic vision, but also that he is capable of far better songs than the highlighted image-making songs of the first disc.
Disc one definitely establishes an attitude Hank wishes to convey about the state of country and its unseen angry youth, while disc two seems to utilize noise art to filter some listeners out from discovering the stripped down musical gems that he has laced throughout it. Disc two’s second track is more than forty minutes long and starts with a creepy, slowed-down demon-like voice singing to the tune of a broken and almost inaudible guitar. This creepy whales-mating sound goes on for the first two and a half minutes. Three minutes of train sounds follow. Six minutes into the second track, Hank sings another stripped down song that sounds amazingly like his grandfather. This song is one of the best on the album, but it isn’t tracked out so to find it you really have to want it.
Although Hank Jr, Hank III’s Daddy, could easily be called one of the fathers of the hokey new breed of country music over-running Nashville, Hank III says “pop country really sucks.” He’s right. Country music isn’t bad, it just needs to be geared more to the bad boys that really live it.
Hank is honest and the music is classic fiddle, guitar, and trap kit country that you might hear on any porch in Tennessee. This country is far more real than Nashville country and deserves a listen from anyone that is bored with the same old pop country. Crave something new that sounds old? Hank III is sending you Straight to Hell.
|
|
