Kentucky Native’s First Tells Stories Of Heartland
Chris Knight
“Chris Knight” (Decca) ***
“It Ain’t Easy Being Me,” the opening cut on this Kentucky native’s debut album, busts through the swinging doors like a brash fanfare for a new roots-rock hero. Knight gives this loser’s anthem, which he co-wrote with Craig Wiseman, a rugged, Steve Earle attack and a self-deprecating twang that’s pure John Prine.
“There ought to be a town somewhere/Named for how I feel/Yeah I could be the mayor down there/And say welcome to Sorryville.”
If the rest of the album doesn’t quite sustain that promise, Knight holds his own through a series of heartland vignettes. You’ve got your stubborn farmer and your troubled kids, jilted guys and young lovers, outlaws and idealists, cops and hookers … Familiar stuff, but it never succumbs to formula. Knight tells the stories well and makes them seem worth telling, and his rough voice makes them seem deeply felt.
His country, rock and folk blend provides a flavorful, subtly exotic propellant for the narratives.
Knight’s sound and writing are still in the shadow of Prine and Earle, but he clearly has the potential to stake out his own territory. As he does, he should take a cue from this album’s best song and approach life a little more wryly.
- Richard Cromelin
Deep Forest
“Comparsa” (550 Music)**-1/2
It’s not surprising that many world music traditionalists are not exactly entranced by the success of Deep Forest. The French duo of Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez has constructed a music that essentially lays down a danceable groove beneath an almost endless collection of world music sounds. And they’ve done it with tremendous success - a Grammy for their second album, “Boheme,” and more than 3 million albums sold worldwide.
“Comparsa,” perhaps predictably, takes a similar tack. This time out, the sounds trace largely to sun countries such as Mexico, Madagascar and the Caribbean, with some of the more intriguing moments provided by Wes Madiko, a Bantu griot, and Mama Sana, a 100-year-old Malagasy who died prior to the completion of the album. While one can be bothered by Deep Forest’s superficial, commercial exploitation of ethnic sounds, there’s no denying the fact that the unit effectively achieves its goal of creating a kind of rhythmic, bubbling, world-music stew.
- Don Heckman
Various Artists
“The Apostle” soundtrack (Rising Tide)***
The big question in the film is whether Robert Duvall’s flamboyant Pentecostal preacher is the real deal.
This soundtrack isn’t, technically that is: Only three of these recordings of vintage gospel songs are heard in the movie. Numbers sung by characters in writer-actor-director Robert Duvall’s exploration of that old-time religion are done here by Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, Steven Curtis Chapman and other top country, Christian and gospel performers.
The music itself, however, is the real deal, although the all-star approach can’t achieve the power of a concentrated gospel performance. Still, the simple secret of gospel music is that while sermons may touch the head or the heart, music can reach directly to the soul, and many of these renditions make that point clear.
The Gaither Vocal Band harmonizes chillingly in “There Is a River” and Rebecca Lynn Howard sings with angelic purity in “Softly & Tenderly.” Sounds of Blackness adds the black gospel component with the rave-up “Victory Is Mine,” while Lyle Lovett bridges white country and black gospel with his big-band-and-choir rendition of “I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord.” Say amen, somebody.
- Randy Lewis
Album scale: one star (poor) to four (excellent)