Dixie Chickens?

Dixie Chicks.jpg

“Not Ready to Make Nice,” the first single from the Dixie Chicks’ Taking the Long Way and one of the most striking singles by anyone all year, is the trio’s “Welcome to the Terror Dome.” It’s the Chicks’ response to the blacklisting, disc-burning, death threats, and other terrors and indignities that stormed around the group following Natalie Maines’ off-hand remark that she was ahamed to share a homestate with a President who was only days from authorizing an invasion of Iraq.

As Public Enemy did with “Welcome to the Terrodome,” the Chicks chose to respond to threat on record not by apologizing but by upping the ante. The single shouts, in essence, ”Fuck you” to country radio and their other detractors, and it also suggests that these women feel the controversey has changed them for the better. “I got so much trouble on my mind/ Refuse to lose,” Chuck D. barked angrily in 1994. In ‘06, Natalie recalls her personal Terrordome and declares, “It turned my whole world around/ and I kind of like it.”

The record begins quietly, with a Neil Young-styled acoustic strum, followed by Natalie’s cautiously cooed opening: “Forgive sounds good/ Forget? I’m not sure I could.” From there, the record builds, getting louder, the words spilling out faster, through the chorus (”I’m not ready to back down…I’m mad as hell and I don’t have time to go ’round and ’round and ’round!”) and into a bridge that is musically, emotionally, and intellectually undeniable:

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby

With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’

It’s a sad, sad story when a mother will teach ‘er

daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.

And how in the world can the words that I said

Send somebody so over the edge

That they’d write me a letter

Sayin’ I better

Shut up and sing or my life will be over?

All through this thrilling rant, the strings of producer Rick Rubin egg Maines on, and they have her back, too, jabbing hard at the listener like a finger into the chest. Maines’ voice rises and intensifies as she goes. She’s reeling, still, from all that’s happened. More to the point, she’s been innervated by it as well, though, speeding ahead with an undeniably righteous, you-go-girl, damn-straight indignation. When she spits in disgust at that one especially ugly missive–shut up and sing or her life wll be over–the strings shake free of Maines’ wrath and soar heavenward, taking Maines and us with them. In that instant, the sun emerges from dark and stormy skies, the whole world shines anew, and her life is not over. Goddamn!

*****

“Not Ready to Make Nice” may be “Welcome to the Terror Dome,” but Taking the Long Way is not Fear of a Black Planet.  Most obviously, that’s because it’s just not good enough to be compared to that masterpiece. Living in Stereo’s best friend was right, I think, when he commented to me recently that Taking the Long Way is just too long at 14 tracks, especially when all but one clocks in longer than four minutes. And I wish the album was all as contemporary twangy as the title track, which is more or less sonically of a piece with earlier Chicks’ singles like “Ready to Run.”

That said, everything here is worth a listen. I think there are a few especially strong tracks, including a hushed “Lullaby,” in which Maines’ pledges undying loyalty to a newborn, and “Bitter End,” where the group says good riddance (among other goodbyes) to fair weather fans who couldn’t get enough of Maines back when she was “the shiniest star.” Indeed, almost every song on the disc engagingly expresses the three’s justified anger about what the group now calls “The Incident.” Taking the Long Way is a good record.

Still, the problem for me is what’s not on the album…some, uh, minor points that are either ignored here altogether or alluded to in only the vaguest terms. What’s not here, or is not here nearly enough, includes but is not limited to: 1) President Bush, 2) what he was preparing to do that made Maines ashamed in the first place, and 3) the subsequent war, which has in the interveaning years injured anywhere from 18,490 American soldiers (the official Dept. of Defense number) upwards to almost 50,000  (according to some estimates)–and that has killed an estimated 40,000 Iraqi civilians and at least 2522 men and women of the U.S. military, not to mention 214 coalition service members, and 340 contractors of varying nationalities who are not included in official tallies. (For the sources of these numbers and more grim statistics, go here.)

Granted, when people threaten to kill you, you tend to take it, you know, personally. The Chicks’ personal reaction to all the shit they’ve been through is necessary and wholly understandable, as is their passionate defense of their right to say what they want. Indeed, this album is all about asserting a right to speak one’s mind. Fair enough. But by focussing solely on personal outrage to the exclusion of the very public reasons that ingnited the controversey in the first place, the Chicks have eschewed politics and replaced them with a mere tantrum.

This became most clear to me on “I Hope,” the album’s closing track. I was glad to see the song listed on the back of the jewel box because I’d heard it last year when it was released as post-Katrina benefit single. I was especially excited to think that such a wide audience would now hear the thrilling guitar work of sacred steel player Robert Randolph.

Unfortunately, the album uses not Randolph’s church-inspired, and inspiring, Let’s-remake-the-world version but a new shoulder-shrugging, noodling and antiseptic version with Keb Mo. This is like trading in the Roman Candle you bought to celebrate our nation’s independence with a pack of those goofy charcoal snake pellets. We need something to light up a dark and troubled sky just now, but this thing just puts off a lot of smoke and fizzles a little while it coils, nicely enough, ’round and ’round and ’round.

*****

For more on the Chicks album…I agree with most everything Charles “Shot of Rhythm” Hughes wrote about the record back in May, and I like what Danny “Take ‘Em As They Come” Alexander had to say about the album, as well, in a post that also compares the Chicks to rappers, albeit on different grounds than I do here.

*****

And now for the music…

“Not Ready to Make Nice” and “Bitter End” from Taking the Long Way (Open Wide/Columbia, 2006)

“I Hope” the drowsy Taking the Long Way version, with Keb Mo

“I Hope” the pulse-quickening Katrina Charity version, with Robert Randolph

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

15 Responses to “Dixie Chickens?”

  1. Andrea Says:
    June 29th, 2006 at 8:20 pm

    This may be my least favorite Dixie Chicks record. I think Rick Rubin went overboard on the production. Sometimes less really is more. Also, as you said, the thing is just too damn long. And there’s nothing fun about the album. They had a sense of humor on the other albums. Now they’re just taking themselves far too seriously. Lighten up a little!

  2. Ed Ward Says:
    June 30th, 2006 at 12:33 pm

    The only excuse I can think of for Keb Mo having a career, let alone a record deal, is that his lawyer must be a guy a lot of people owe favors to. He makes Taj Mahal look good, and that’s not a compliment.

  3. livingin Says:
    June 30th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    Andrea: I agree that less is often more, but the big sound of this record didn’t bother me at all. In fact, it’s often pretty much less is more–I’m thinking of Lullaby and Silent House and Easy Silence. And, for me, part of what’s great about, say, Not Ready to Make Nice is the contrast between the less that begins the track, the more it builds to, and the less to which it returns. I’m likely in the minority on this score, I know…it sounds like you would appreciate the Charles Hughes piece I linked to, for instance.

    Ed: Yes!

  4. Kevin Says:
    July 1st, 2006 at 9:33 am

    I heard of the Dixie Chicks before (I live in Mass.) but never really took interest. However, I gotta say that I really love this new album. I’m usually a rocker, but I find myself in the car playing this over and over again. I’ve also turned a few friends on to this album with positive results.

    Just the view from someone who doesn’t give a shit about political views. I bought it and I love it.

    Kevin

  5. Danny Says:
    July 1st, 2006 at 8:28 pm

    Strong piece, David, and thanks for the nod to what I wrote, although I never intended it to be a “review” of the album. (Similarly, I never thought of the Seeger Sessions piece from a month or so ago as a review because I mentioned early in the article I had not yet heard the album just “We Shall Overcome”–which bothered me at first–and “Oklahoma Home.”

    I suppose one reason why I don’t write about music professionally anymore is that the concept of “reviewing” music qualitatively never sat right with me. I’m generally motivated by the desire to engage with the music, to talk back to it and to share the experience of it with others.

    That’s just me. I admire and love other writers (like you) who feel much more comfortable in the reviewer’s role.

    That said, this is something I wrote to explain to some other friends how I feel about the album–

    The new Dixie Chicks album is just one of those things that I took right to heart without second guessing it, and I was surprised others felt such distance from it. There’s not a lot of uptempo, but I wouldn’t call it draggy either. What may be a little formulaic but works for me is that almost every song builds from a very quiet place–just a single guitar and voice generally–to almost a kaleidoscope (actually I think of a carnival ground) of wide reaching sounds.

    One exception, “Lullaby,” is maybe my favorite thing on there, where the musical builds to a sort of balance of loosely interlocking parts that actually make me think of mobiles over a child’s cradle. That song moves me in ways I can’t quite articulate. It does put me in mind of my daughter, and all the things I want her to know right now.

    You said you wanted more uptempo, and you’re right that there aren’t many fast songs, but I do think there are a number of exuberant mid-tempo numbers–”I Like It,” “The Long Way Around,” “So Hard,” “Everybody Knows”–it seems to my like most of the record, actually. As for fast, I guess there’s really just “Lubbock or Leave It,” but when a Dixie Chicks song puts me in mind of Metallica in tempo, theme and string-popping aggression, it may count as two.

    I also love the exquisite contradictions in the album. I guess that’s what I meant calling it “honest.” It sounds like life–the ambivalence about one relationship given up for another and a beautiful child on “Favorite Year” and “Voice Inside My Head” are bracingly real and messy and moving to me. So are the attempts to carry on for others past death and senility, which I think works best on “Silent House” (but “Bitter End’s” title heightens the contradictions, as does its nod to Katrina–telling the dead to go ahead and sleep, admitting the singer can’t sleep because the others never should have drowned). I love “Not Ready to Make Nice” for all sorts of reasons, most of them more personal than political. The cracking tough guy mask on “Everybody Knows,” which follows right after, fingers the jagged edge of walking the line. Only in moments of grace does it feel like certainty. Most of the time, it feels like “just barely getting by.”
    Danny

  6. livingin Says:
    July 1st, 2006 at 8:44 pm

    I secon all of this, Danny. And I too hear in Not Ready some intensely personal evocations, but more than that too.

    But when you note that you didn’t write a review of the record, and later respond to someone’s conern that there needed to be more uptempo stuff on the record, you’re just talking generally, not necessarily directly to what I wrote, right?

    Be warned: I’m going to keep recommending your stuff until the whole world gives up and just bookmarks your site.

  7. Danny Says:
    July 2nd, 2006 at 2:21 am

    Well, I can’t give you enough love for your recommends. Thank you!!

    The “you” actually refers to Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen,

    Danny

  8. livingin Says:
    July 2nd, 2006 at 3:21 am

    One thing I keep forgetting to say about this album is that I think Natalie Maines does the best singing over her career…the least stylized and what sounds anyway like the least self-conscious.

    I don’t see how what I do, or try to do, is really much different from what you do, in terms of engaging and talking back. At least I wouldn’t describe what I do any differently than that.

  9. Ed Ward Says:
    July 2nd, 2006 at 12:43 pm

    Not to get too meta or anything, but I like Danny’s comment. I’ve been raving on and on about how people “review” albums instead of “criticizing” them. These “rock critics” around today aren’t “critics” at all: they’re reviewers. They tell you what’s there and if they like it or not. A great consumer guide, a lousy look at the culture which produces the product. I’m not much interested in “reviwing” myself; maybe that’s why I’m finding it harder and harder to get work.

  10. livingin Says:
    July 2nd, 2006 at 1:01 pm

    Amen, Ed. The lack of criticism today, and not just in music, is one I’ve complained about incessantly, and one reason why I started this ride. And it’s why, also, that I try to highlight, now and then, the actual criticism here of other writers–Roy Kasten, Cheryl Cline, Danny, Dave Marsh, Craig Werner, Bill Malone, Bill Friskics-Warren–all those folks, and those to come, who have pieces included at The Reading List or who I review in The Bookshelf.

  11. Danny Says:
    July 3rd, 2006 at 3:20 pm

    Ed and David, I hear what both of you are saying. I don’t even trust much of the consumer guide anymore, you know?

    Danny

  12. livingin Says:
    July 3rd, 2006 at 10:03 pm

    I don’t trust the consumer guides either–the focus on product and what to buy, and on celebrity rather than artistry, I hate it all, the way it strips away the humanity–the concern with humanity–of writer and artist alike, though I also understand that it’s increasingly the only gig available for those wanting to make a living at some form of music writing: the doctor, lawyer, priest and poet have all been converted to wage laborers…or however that goes. –dc

  13. Mickey Soltys Says:
    July 5th, 2006 at 12:53 pm

    There sure is a lot of fuss being made about a mediocre record. This thing is absolutely killed by the production. The drumming is especially awful. Listening to how the drummer absolutely kills any chance of an actual groove happening in these ponderous, plodding songs.

    I find myself wondering what someone like Levon Helm or Kenny Malone would have done with this material. I know that they wouldn’t have just whacked away ignorantly on the 2 and 4.

  14. Dan Says:
    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:01 pm

    Are you sure that those 2 versions of I Hope aren’t the same? I can not tell any difference. I am going to see the Chix tonight at Jones Beach. Looking forward to it!!

  15. Dan Says:
    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:05 pm

    Never mind, I heard it at the guitar at the end of the song. Otherwise they are almost identical.

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