One of the pillars of Texan Americana, James McMurtry has been presenting his particular wry, sad, sardonic story-songs for almost as long as his late father wrote brilliant novels. As such, it\u2019s hard to remember when he was still a beginner, still a young voice in the world of smoky bars and twisted family reunions.<\/p>\n
Where\u2019d You Hide The Body<\/i> was his third full-length release, and it shows a young man starting to hit his stride but still making occasional missteps. Discovered by John Mellencamp in 1987, McMurtry scored a modest hit with his debut album Too Long In The Wasteland<\/i>, but he has never received the adulation and commercial success one might expect, which is a shame.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, I want to point out that McMurtry is a pretty damned fine guitarist. He doesn\u2019t get a lot of repute for this, but his acoustic work is almost always perfectly matched to the song and the style; while he\u2019s not flashy, he\u2019s solid. The same can be said for his voice; expressive, gentle, but often dry as West Texas in August. He has the ability to project the appropriate emotion for the song\u2026 not as common an ability as one would think.<\/p>\n
The problem here is that this is a tale of two sides. (Remember sides? Wait, vinyl is coming back, people know what sides are. Anyway.) <\/p>\n
The first seven tracks are amazing. \u201cRachel\u2019s Song\u201d may be my vote for the best storytelling in music ever. \u201cIolanthe\u201d is a thumping, rollicking tune that\u2019s almost fun. (McMurtry is not a big fan of fun; even \u201cChoctaw Bingo\u201d from St Mary Of The Woods<\/i> has a massive dark underbelly). \u201cLevelland\u201d is both description and indictment; its sepia-toned look at \u201cflyover country\u201d would be a theme woven through all of McMurtry\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
The problem is the last six tracks. With the exception of rocker \u201cRayolight,\u201d the energy level drops badly. While McMurtry is a good-to-great guitarist, the instrumental \u201cLate Norther\u201d does no service to the album as a whole.<\/p>\n
But in the end, this album hangs on the solid gold hook of \u201cRachel\u2019s Song.\u201d I cannot, in good conscience, give this album lower than a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6789],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46733","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-james-mcmurtry","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46733"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}