[Postcard2] First Half Favorites

[Richard Fannan]

My top twelve

Allan Toussaint - Bright Mississippi
Brad Paisley - American Saturday Night
Willie and the Wheel
Seal - Soul
Bob Dylan - Together Through Life
Raul Malo - Lucky One
Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women
Man of Somebody's Dreams - Chris Gaffney Tribute
Booker T - Potato Hole
Pynandi - Chango Spasiuk
Buddy and Julie Miller- Written in Chalk
West Side Story - new cast recording

A few comments on the Brad Paisley.  I've always been a fan since he's a
great guitar picker, good singer and fine songwriter but his previous albums
have had a few too many novelty songs on them and a few too many attempts at
country mainstream success.  This is his best album by far.  Phenomenal
guitar playing , including some great blues licks, and the songs, all
written or co-written by Paisley, run the gamut from light novelties to
honky tonk weeper to some really unusual (for a mainstream country artist)
lyrical themes.  The lead song, and current single, American Saturday Night,
with more than a touch of Springsteen, is an ode to multiculturalism.
Welcome to the Future starts as  lighthearted praise for new technology
(dvds in cars, pacman on a cell phone and video chats) and then, very
unexpectedly, has the following line" "I had a friend back in school,
running back on the football team, they burned a cross in his front yard,
for asking out the homecoming queen".  The song then sort of goes on to
praise the advances we've made, with the subtext seeming to be Obama's
election, but the song is more complicated. And then there is Pants which
starts out as a good old boy anthem "You say the man inside those Levis
don't take orders and she'll just have to realize that you'll do as you damn
well please" and then switches into an all out feminist anthem: "You wear
the pants, well buddy good for you, I'm so impressed, well whoop ti do, you
need to know that ain't how it works, its not who wears the pants, its who
wears the skirt",  And the obligatory religious song has a pretty good
refrain:  Make no mistake, every pray you pray gets answered even though
sometimes the answer is no".  This is a really good record.