[Postcard2] FW: Patterson Hood, Holly Williams

[Richard Wentraut]

Someone here asked about Patterson Hood here the other day.. I just got
this, and thought I'd forward it.

Anyone in the Nashville area, Holly Williams is doing a "in-store"
performance at Grimey's July 1st.

NEW CDs
The New York Times

PATTERSON HOOD
"Murdering Oscar (and other love songs)" (Ruth St.)
Review by Jon Parles
Neil Young stirred up echoes of the Civil War with his condemnatory 
"Southern Man" in 1970, soon to be answered by Lynyrd Skynyrd's proud 
"Sweet Home Alabama." Decades later Patterson Hood and the band he 
started in 1995, Drive-By Truckers, straddled a musical Mason-Dixon line 
by realizing what Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd shared: overdriven guitars 
and blunt, concise lyrics. Hood and the band have merged Young's 
frazzled high vocals and Crazy Horse's grungy trudge with a guitar 
twang, drawl and Southern perspective.

"Murdering Oscar (and other love songs)" collects songs Hood had written 
before and outside the band since 1991, mostly recorded in 2005 and 
tinkered with over the last four years. Members of Drive-By Truckers and 
other musicians back him up. Distorted guitars still propel most of the 
songs, though some arrangements lean toward country with banjo or 
fiddle. And Hood still sings with bleary conviction and bone-deep 
humility: "I'm just something she's got stuck to the bottom of her 
shoe," he sings in "Pollyanna."

The album mixes the hard-nosed character studies he writes for Drive-By 
Truckers and more personal, guardedly hopeful songs. It juxtaposes his 
brasher, more cynical younger self with his current role as a husband 
and father.

His father, David Hood - the bass player of the Muscle Shoals studio 
band that was a bulwark of Southern soul music - sits in on "I 
Understand Now," a two-chord rocker from 2002 celebrating "the value of 
generations changing hands/Family ties and lips and eyes. Pass it down." 
Hood follows it with "Screwtopia," a more jaundiced view, from 1994, of 
settling down in suburbia: "Come on baby take my hand, SUV or minivan?"

Then and now he's conscious of mortality and dogged perseverance, 
writing about murder and suicide along with family and continuity. As 
the album ends, with "Back of a Bible," his guitars build a soul ballad, 
and he's back on the road, writing his wife a love song on a blank page 
in a motel Bible: "I ain't no authority about what it says in it," he 
admits.

HOLLY WILLIAMS
"Here With Me" (Mercury)
Review by Jon Caramanica
Last week Holly Williams's father, Hank Williams Jr., continued to 
grapple with long-cast shadows by releasing "127 Rose Avenue," an album 
named for the childhood address of his father, the country pioneer Hank 
Williams. That same day Williams released her second album, "Here With 
Me," on which she sings, "Some days I wanna run from the place I call 
home/I guess I'm just needing some danger."

That's on "Three Days in Bed," about fleeing to Paris for an analgesic 
shot of romance. Her accent on "Seine" and "Boulevard Saint-Germain"? 
Iffy. But the sentiment is clear: History can be a burden, if you're 
scared to run from it.

That fear is a recurring note on "Here With Me," which manages both 
heresy and faithfulness to the family business and is a vast improvement 
over Williams's 2004 debut album, "The Ones We Never Knew" (Universal 
South). Written mostly by Williams, the new record tends toward the 
intimate, recalling in places the excellent 2004 whiskey-stained debut 
album by Julie Roberts, with a touch of Bonnie Raitt's blues.

To her credit Williams isn't hiding from her legacy. It's a source of 
strength on "Without Jesus Here With Me," about surviving her near-fatal 
2006 car accident. ("Hank's words, they taught me everything," she 
sings.) And "Let Her Go," a vibrant roots ramble directed at a father 
with a firm grip, is sung with earned frankness: "She wants to touch the 
world with her own hands."("Mama," about Williams's parents' tumble of a 
relationship, aches in the lyric but surprisingly not the delivery.)

Williams contributes most to the family tradition, though, when she 
shuts it out, staking out quiet, warm, insightful territory for herself. 
"He's Making a Fool Out of You" scolds casually, as if fatigued from 
repetition, and a cover of Neil Young's "Birds," accompanied only by 
Gordie Sampson on piano, is uncomplicatedly beautiful. Most promising 
are the two songs produced with Tony Brown - especially the stunning 
"Gone With the Morning Sun" - who adds fullness without overbearing power.

It's the opposite of "Keep the Change," written by the professional 
songwriting hands Hillary Lindsey and Luke Laird, which is ambitious but 
also anonymous. Its sassy sentiment and Technicolor arrangements do 
Williams, who's better when hushed, no favors. As a single, it flopped, 
which should be seen less as a disappointment than as a gift. There's 
just no need to be that big, no need to carry that weight.

Read the entire article, including reviews of new CDs by Mars Volta and 
Ginuwine here <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/arts/music/22choice.html>