Todd Snider
Crank It, We’re Doomed
どうやら、だそうだそうと試行しつつ、
廃棄やらずっと保留していた作品のよう。
かなりの力作となっている。
なんでこれが放置気味なのか。
https://americanahighways.org/2023/11/08/review-todd-snider-crank-it-were-doomed/
Last week, a “new” song from the Beatles was released – a late-era John Lennon solo tune with contributions from his erstwhile bandmates (a rather creepy video for “Now and Then” was also cooked up, but the less we say about that, the better). Much more interesting – and artful – than this is the latest project from singer-songwriter Todd Snider. His long-mythologized album Crank It, We’re Doomed was scrapped and essentially sold off for parts over the course of the past 16 years. Songs were repurposed for other records, but the legend among the “Shitheads” (Snider’s most ardent fans) lived on until engineer Jim DeMain dug out a copy of the stereo masters. Now, 15 of the original tracks from one of Snider’s most productive (and most exploratory) periods are together as originally intended, giving those Shitheads an early holiday gift, as well as appearances from two country music legends.
Even though Snider originally scrapped Crank It for artistic reasons, he thought enough of the album to use pieces of it later on. This includes the first track, “From A Dying Rose,” a bluesy, organ-laced tune that appeared [in this original form, but under the title “Dividing the Estate (A Heart Attack)”] on Snider’s Peace Queer. Written with the late Kent Finlay, the song details the attempt to say a kind goodbye to a man who chose not to live his best life – “The preacher couldn’t tell us everything that he did/But he said every kind thing that he could.” Another retitled track from Peace Queer makes an appearance, as “Stuck on the Corner (Prelude to a Heart Attack)” shows up in garage-blues form under its original title, “Handleman’s Revenge.” Full of harmonica, salty guitar licks and barroom piano, the song is Snider’s version of workingman’s lament – “He stood up and made a speech about how/We would all have to work even harder now/I thought, ‘Harder now, harder at what?’” – with the narrator wishing he could revert back to the carefree days now enjoyed by his son – “He is as unimpressed by these plaques in my cubicle/As I am secretly impressed with his ability/To look at everything so so completely irresponsibly.”
以下も 名盤級
202311推し