There is a fundamental problem critiquing art with overt political content. Can you separate the message from the means of delivery in order to maintain objectivity when forming opinions about the end result? Of course you can, as long as you’re willing to reduce your subject to a birdbath – possibly pretty but not very deep. There is never content without form and there is never form without content, the two are simply arranged differently on occasion to accentuate one over the other. So the question becomes should you separate an artist’s politics, when used to inform his or her content, from the form of presentation for review? Generally I think not, but on this, the eve of Election Day 2004, I must emphatically say “hell no.”
Ultimately, systematized attempts to beat around the political bush (oh, pun intended) have failed the public, leaving readers with little more than elaborate descriptions of how a thing looks or sounds with references to similar offerings from the recent past intended to uphold a critic’s opinion. Maybe this comes from a relativist view that an artist’s content is wholly their own and therefore somehow holy – after all, who are any of us to judge the motives, thoughts or intentions of someone just because they have chosen to make those motives, thoughts or intentions public. If you don’t want people taking shots you shouldn’t paint the targets. I think Mr. Earle would agree to those terms.
However, it’s easy and a little embarrassing for me to pretend to make a stink about a person’s politics in this review since I have long admired Steve Earle’s vocal participation in public affairs and share his “of the people, by the people, for the people” views in opposition to the federal death penalty, the election sham of 2000 (not to mention the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq), and support his defense of the civil liberties promised by the Bill of Rights in a more transparent, inclusive democracy. Sure, it’s easy to say you’re going to take a guy’s politics into account along with the music when you already know you agree with him on one and are a fan of the other. Isn’t it hard to objectively criticize someone while you’re helping the banner unfurl!? I write these reviews as a hobby in the time I can spare on my lunch break and after my daughter falls asleep. I write about what I like or what pushes my buttons. If I’m not a fan of the act in question then they’ve done something that caught my ear for better or worse and I feel inclined to comment. I make no claim of objectivity when false claims to the same by market media outlets have fostered complacency in an armchair public which has been convinced by that same industry’s endless panel of “expert analysts” that it, as a public, is somehow under-qualified to think for itself. I’m a fan of Steve Earle’s music and I support his activism. Besides, the guy doesn’t give you much to talk about outside of current politics on this one. So, that said:
Unlike some folks who are happy to leave their politics at the studio door Steve Earle has consistently and plainly used his art to speak his mind on issues relevant, lingering and contemporary to his audience (more on that later). You can usually find a gem or two on each album, but with 2002’s “Jerusalem” Earle brought his politics to center stage with the divisive “John Walker’s Blues,” a poet’s telling of the young man’s doomed search for identity and god. The themes were hardly new territory but the CNN style up-to-the-minute naming of names seemed to mark a breaking point. Steve Earle had seen enough and was prepared to lay it out the best way he knew how. “Revolution” is then a natural progression of the pendulum’s swing from form-rich to content-heavy material. From lamenting Vietnam on “Copperhead Road” to the peerless musical accomplishment of “The Mountain” and now back again, Earle’s message is clear and unmistakable. It is time for change.
No time is wasted getting to the point. “The Revolution Starts…” is the first track and a call to grassroots activism. Listeners are heartened to remember that politics start at home in small towns where the decision to save money by shopping at Wal-mart is a political one with ramifications for your neighbors and friends. There’s nothing revolutionary in the song’s sound or message, as fans who have seen him live will tell you. The crunchy, up close production is consistent with his post-incarceration offerings from the twangtrust of Earle and Ray Kennedy – a Tennessee wall of sound from three or four mostly wooden instruments and some really loud amps.
But revolution is such a big word to bandy about. It carries with it images of toppling statues and blood in the streets, the kind of things we’re better at foisting on others than wishing for ourselves. We already had our revolution, tea party and all, and it seems like healthy countries only get one. Every successful revolution we’ve had since then has been social – Industrial, Sexual, Technological. What I’m getting at is that, even for the most disenfranchised and radically left or right winged among us, a full-fledged, all-out, no-turning-back Revolution is a pretty big pill to swallow. I think what he really wants, specifically right now, is for everyone to vote Democrat. Generally, holding our elected officials accountable for their actions, taking corporate influence out of public policy, and acting as responsible, good neighbors in the world would be nice too. There are so few good anthems out there so it’s not surprising he should try his hand here, but Earle is at his best when he’s telling a story, confessing a sin or simply sticking it to someone. The song represents a ground swell with a slow build and chugging pulse just right for the Farm Aid crowd he’s played so long; a consciousness raiser and solid offering but nothing to galvanize the masses, even when heard the second time around at the end of the album.
Fortunately things ring true with songs number two and three, where Earle is back on track creating sympathetic characters caught doing what was right at the start but it has now gone wrong. “Home to Houston” is a Texas road-rocker spotlighting one man’s stubborn regret for enlisting after 9/11 and his desperate resolve to build a better life if he makes it back. Mention of Basra could easily have been Kabul, Managua or Danang without changing the song’s impact or central theme – in times of crisis a man is needed most at home. “Rich Man’s War” addresses the persistence of an economic draft in our country, and comes complete with a lip curling twist in the final verse intended to shrink the listener’s perception of the world. These songs work because they chisel away at fundamental inconsistencies and injustice upon which crucial decisions were made to go to war - you’ll always have a ready fighting force if enlisting is all that’s left when you can’t provide decent jobs at home, and the public will always support it’s troops when the troops come from the public, even it they don’t support the war. The songs are alternately hard-driven and soberly direct with stories inseparable from both their form, themes and times.
I’m not really sure what could have precipitated “Condi, Condi,” which has Earle pitching woo to a less than receptive Condaleeza Rice. I imagine it had something to do with a few margaritas and too much CSPAN. The song itself is a fairly sweet tex-mex romance with a touch of island spice, but Earle’s two-packs-a-day growl renders it more drunken come-on than sly put-on, a ploy which might have seemed more needling and effective. He dulls his own barbs with a heavy nudge to wink ratio, sweating all over his guitar beneath the wrong window. I’m not sure how sexualizing the straight-arrow Rice moves any agenda forward, or really makes sense at all. Maybe he wants to mildly embarrass her or, as the song implies, coax out her hidden, passionate side. It would still come across just as drunk and/or glib were it about anybody BUT Condaleeza Rice, and maybe then it would just be fun. Earle takes his politics so seriously everywhere else that it’s hard to think of this as a joke, and if it is I’m still not sure I’m laughing.
But all of this amounts to a prelude for what you really came to hear, the reason you bought the disc in the first place and the reason you’ll be wearing that guilty smile the next time some talking head mentions news of a leak at the CIA. “F the CC,” as song titles go, is a cop out for someone who asks us, in the chorus, to fuck not only the FCC, but the FBI and CIA with a final reminder that we are living in the “mutherfuckin’ USA”.
Earle has played with clever letters-only titling before, disguising the illicit content of “Cckmb” (short for “cocaine cannot kill my brain”) on his outstanding 1996 resurrection album “I Feel Alright.” It was awkward then and it is pointless, even cowardly, now. How, Steve, are we going to have our revolution if you can’t put the word fuck in the title of a song that uses it no less than 20 times in 3 minutes 12 seconds - that's a "fuck" every 9.5 seconds? How?
It’s safe to say that until now “fuck” has never been tagged to so many federal acronyms (in song) so many times in such a short span of time. While that in itself is an accomplishment the real victory is situating what your more stiff collared fascists might call treason in an irresistible stomp which, politics aside, will power-drill itself into your head and come pounding back to you as you walk on sidewalks or drive in cars. By protesting via a balls-out rock song instead of a dense, preachy one (see “Warrior”) the listener’s hand is forced: you absolutely MUST decide if you are someone who can sing along without blushing or not. Admittedly, this may be based more on an aversion to saying “fuck” in mixed company than on your politics, but you still have to think about it or risk blurting things out just because it’s got a good beat and you can shout to it.
All here is not true patriotism and fearless protest, however. Earle’s banner waving for the ole’ USA, given the context, is less likely a declaration of national pride Lee Greenwood style than a reminder to detractors that since this IS the "mutherfuckin' USA" his right to tell the FCC, FBI, and CIA to go fuck themselves is protected by the First Fucking Amendment to the Mutherfucking Constitution. Woody Guthrie by way of The Sex Pistols.
Oh yea, there are four other songs that have nothing to do with war, politics or government, and they aren’t bad.
Here’s the thing: It would be easy and at times forgivable to dismiss an artist’s politics or personal choices when the finished work passes muster. How else could Michael Jackson still sell records? In his apparent rush to get this album out in time to make a difference at the polls tomorrow some of the songs came out half-baked instead of piping hot. Besides which Earle is largely preaching to the choir since his core audience started shifting from union halls and furrowed fields to lecture halls and soccer fields when his politics kept left while Middle America veered right.
So can I recommend a merely passable album based on the strength of the artist’s convictions and my alignment with his political message? Am I so swayed by the importance of this moment in national politics as to pretend that the album, though timely and stirring, will ever stack up against “Guitar Town” and “Transcendental Blues?” Not quite. But the right songs aren’t always the best songs and, in this case, something good (not great) is better than nothing at all.
I’m not saying you have to be for it or against it or that pop albums and the crap people write about them amount to much. I will say that if you see or hear something out there – rhetoric, bullshit, bigotry, hypocrisy, whatever – then you, the critically minded participant in society, are responsible for acknowledging, evaluating and acting on it for yourself. Steve Earle knows this and made an album to remind the rest of us, venting a little steam along the way. Even if you don’t find yourself on his side I hope you can speak up when the opportunity presents itself.
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