The Executioner
* The Pine Valley Cosmonauts: I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (Rosie Flores) (3 mb) | The Snakes Crawl At Night (Janet Bean) (4 mb) | Sing Me Back Home (Edith Frost) (4 mb)
From The Executioner’s Last Songs Vol. 1 : Bloodshot Records : BS 074
The addendum to the rest of the title reads: The Pine Valley Cosmonauts consign songs of Murder, Mob-Law & Cruel, Cruel Punishment to the realm of Myth, Memory And History To benefit The Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project. Whew! Now that’s a mouthful of a title, but it pretty accurately describes what this album is all about. The Pine Valley Cosmonauts were brought together by Jon Langford who might be better known as one of the founders of the genre defying country/punk band known as The Mekons.
The Cosmonauts are one of the leaders of the new/old school country. Fairly traditional sounding country music emanates from their instruments, but with a little more of a punk edge to it. For this benefit album, they’ve invited some of the finest singers (country and otherwise) to lend their vocals to songs about death and murder. So, for your listening pleasure, we’ve got a selection of the female vocalists that grace this excellent album. First up is Rosie Flores, who I know next to nothing about. But she chimes in with an incredible cover of a classic Hank Williams song. Next up we’ve got Janet Bean, otherwise known one of the singer/guitarists with Freakwater. And last but not least, we’ve got Edith Frost who lends her considerable vocal talent to an excellent Merle Haggard song.
—–+—–
It’s pretty much official. The Animal Collective put on one of the best shows that I’ve ever seen. Definitely one of the top ten for me.
Jeremy B. said,
April 29, 2005 @ 1:46 pm
The Animal Collective put on one of the best shows that I’ve ever seen.
What did you think of the Ariel Pink set? (I came away with mixed feelings.)
cb said,
April 29, 2005 @ 1:59 pm
You know. I didn’t know much about them aside from the video available on the paw-tracks website. I was definitely more impressed with them than I thought I would be.
But probably not impressed enough to buy their album(s) or deliberately seek out their live show again…there was something about the slapped together sounds that kind of bugged me (not sure if slapped together is the right descriptor, maybe haphazard, maybe something else).
-cb
p.s. did you get to the Sir Richard Bishop concer?? I thought he played incredibly…especially the second to last song, with the extensive use of loops and effects…
countrygrrl said,
May 1, 2005 @ 3:32 am
always rated jon langford when he was with the mekons..glad he has taken the countrry road thanks for drawing my attention to this latest incarnation. enjoy yur blog and i say hi from a wet dreich day in bonnie scotland
Jeremy B. said,
May 3, 2005 @ 8:13 am
I basically agree with you about the A. Pink show– it was more interesting than it was dull, but it wasn’t, in the end, all that interesting.
As for the Bishop show, I enjoyed it, technically it was quite astonishing although I often had some trouble feeling the emotional core of the pieces… very different from the playing of Jack Rose or Fahey in that way.
Do you have that Locust “Wooden Guitar” comp? It’s great.