CD Review: Ry Cooder's "Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down"

In my review of Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball back in March, I mentioned that during our family’s March break holiday down in Florida I took a couple of CDs along to listen to in our rented car. The other CD was Ry Cooder’s latest, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. It’s been out for a while – released back in August, 2011 - so I’ve been listening to it for quite a time; and, unlike Springsteen’s effort, this one sounds more impressive every time you hear it. 

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, Ry Cooder’s fourteenth studio album, is the latest in a long line of excellent recordings dating back to the early ‘70s. And this is one of his very best. Cooder emerged first in the 60s as an accomplished guitarist - he worked as a session musician with the likes of Van Morrison, Randy Newman and The Rolling Stones. He taught Keith Richards a thing or two about guitar-playing, and you can hear the influence on “Honky Tonk Women”. Cooder also plays on Let It Bleed. His own recordings revealed an interest in American roots music; over the years, he has shown a continuing interest in traditional folk, blues, rock, gospel, soul and Tex-Mex. And, of course, he introduced us to traditional Cuban music on the marvellous Buena Vista Social Club (1997).  The first of a series of a collaborations he's done in what they now call "world music".

For the bulk of his career, Ry Cooder has worked like a musicologist – using his solo albums as a platform to introduce unfamiliar genres and figures to a primarily rock-listening audience - expanding the horizons and tastes of a constituency that can often be narrow-minded and surprisingly conservative. He did this not in a proselytizing way, but by exposing his fans to the musical delights of interesting songs and intriguing music.

Ry Cooder beside his '53 Chevy lowrider

In more recent years, Cooder has come into his own as a successful song-writer. On his earlier albums he might offer an occasional song or two of his own; but, starting with Chavez Ravine in 2005, he has put his own songwriting at the heart of his artistic vision. This continued with the other albums of his “California trilogy” – My Name is Buddy and I, Flathead.


Some themes from that trilogy recur in the new album, but Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down is a more wide-ranging look at the temper of the times in contemporary America. Cooder doesn’t like what he sees. His response is a collection of scathing songs about the corrupt politics and the troubling social conditions he sees around him. In this sense, the album is similar to Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball. But Cooder’s work is more radical than Springsteen’s. It doesn’t have the didactic and anthemic pretentions of The Boss; it gives the themes a human face. Cooder prefers “to show, rather than tell”. His songs don’t preach; themes are contextualised in the specific situations of individual lives.


Cooder’s songs here zero in on a corrupt political and economic order – how Wall Street bankers are aided and abetted by the political elite; how desperate Mexican immigrants risk their lives getting into the country illegally, and are then exploited as cheap farm-labourers; how fundamentalist Republicans use a twisted sense of religion to pursue immoral ends; and how poor Americans join the army to escape dead-end lives and are put in harm’s way by a criminal administration.

The back cover

The title of the album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down makes reference to the depression-era careers of Woody Guthrie and friends. Guthrie put out an album called Dust Bowl Ballads (1940), full of social-activist songs about the poor and down-trodden. His song “Pretty Boy Floyd”, for example, is about an outlaw – a bank-robber eventually gunned-down by the police. Guthrie makes him a tragic figure – suggesting his criminality is partly explained by the hardships of the time. He may have been an outlaw, Guthrie sings, who robbed banks at gun-point, but he didn’t steal people’s houses with the flourish of a fountain-pen:

“… as through your life you travel, yes, as through your life you roam;

You won't never see an outlaw drive a family from their home.”

This is the world Cooder evokes with the second song on the album, “El Corrido de Jesse James”. He puts the lyric in the mouth of another outlaw, the notorious Jesse James - who declares that he may have been branded a bandit, but he “never turned a family from their home”. Who is the real outlaw, anyway, Cooder seems to ask. And do we need the likes of Jesse James to exact vigilante justice?

“I’ll cut you down to size my banking brothers,

Put that bonus money back where it belongs.”

The first song that Ry Cooder recorded for this album was “Christmas Time This Year”. It is a scathing anti-war lyric focused on the fate of those poor grunts sent over unwittingly to Iraq to face the horrors of modern warfare. The sarcasm in the lyric is emphasised by the music – a jaunty polka featuring Flaco Jimenez (a long-standing collaborator of Cooder’s) on accordion. He provides a few Christmas-themed flourishes as Cooder sings a song of both pathos and suppressed rage:

“Now Johnny ain’t got no legs and Billy ain’t got no face;

Do they know it’s Christmas time this year?

Tommy looks about the same, but his mind is gone,

Does he know it’s Christmas time this year?”

The themes of these songs are presented with lyrics that are forthright and compelling. And the music is equally effective. The arrangements are sparse and simple - open and spacious - none of the over-produced washes of the Springsteen disc. Cooder often overdubs himself on three or four instruments. His son Joachim plays drums on most tracks. There are tasteful background vocals – a trio of voices – on several tracks. And, unlike the ineffective brass parts on a few of Springsteen’s tracks, Cooder puts some gorgeous horns on a couple of the tracks – the Mariachi choruses on “El Corrido de Jesse James” sounds particularly good.

Two of the best tracks feature just Cooder on guitar and vocals. “Baby Joined the Army” is really a companion piece to “Christmas Time This Year”. It’s a heart-rending song put in the mouth of a father (or husband – it’s ambiguous), whose daughter (or wife) has enlisted in the army to escape her everyday problems. The man had no say, he sings. The deed is done:

“… wasn’t nothing I could do but cry … so I cried.”

Cooder's guitar playing is a slow, hypnotic blues.

The other solo piece is a real tour de force. Cooder channels the great John Lee Hooker in a song called “John Lee Hooker for President”. Not only is his impersonation brilliant, but the song is very funny. Cooder uses Hooker’s persona to make some pointed comments on American politics. On campaign financing, for example, he sings:

“I don’t need yo money, cause I finance my own campaign.

I ain’t for sale; I keep a fat bankroll in my pocket, baby, big as a hay bale.”

There are lots of musical styles here – each done with impeccable taste. Every song’s a gem. Cooder is not the best of vocalists, but he has learned how to overcome his limitations, as many singer-songwriters do, who have been at it for so many years. What’s impressive here is his ability to adopt very different personas in order to deliver a particular lyric. The hard-rock track “I Want My Crown”, for example, has a truly malevolent voice – singing with glee about usurping power and casting down the working man. In “Dreamer”, he sings in the voice of Julio Ruelas, the brother of Fernando Ruelas, the president of Duke’s So Cal, a lowrider car club. The Ruelas brothers worked on a high-profile project with Cooder, turning a 1953 Chevy truck into a lowrider ice-cream truck. The song is a wistful ballad, featuring more distinctive accompaniment from accordion-playing Flaco Jimenez.

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down is an excellent album. If you’re a Ry Cooder fan, this is essential. If you’re not that familiar, check it out. I think it’s a real work of art – great music and compelling song-writing. Not to mention some typically tasty guitar work from a master musician.


[Thanks to Michael H.]

CD Review: Bruce Springsteen's "Wrecking Ball"

The front cover of Wrecking Ball

Wrecking Ball is Bruce Springsteen’s 17th studio album. Released here in North America three weeks ago (March 5th), it is his first album since 2009’s Working on a Dream. In its first week of release it hit #1 in the albums charts in the U.S. and the U.K. I picked it up just a few days before leaving on our March Break holiday in Florida. I thought it would be appropriate to have a couple of typically American albums to listen to in our rented car down there – so I took this and Ry Cooder’s latest album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. Guess which one I preferred?

Wrecking Ball was produced by Ron Aniello, with assistance from Springsteen. Aniello is a successful pop producer who has worked with a couple of dozen other pop acts, including Springsteen's wife, Patti Scialfa. He co-produced Scialfa’s 2007 album Play It As it Lays.

In Wrecking Ball, Springsteen presents a collection of songs primarily about the economic troubles besetting the American working-class during this latest recession. He also lays into the rampant greed and corruption of the economic elite - the Wall Street bankers and industry leaders identified these days as the 1%. He explores the devastation their greed has wrought.

Most of the songs were written last year (2011), but three of them were written earlier and have been performed live over the intervening years. The title track, “Wrecking Ball” was written in 2009 prior to a series of shows the E Street Band did at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It is a tribute to a stadium built in 1976 (which hosted games by the New York Giants and the New York Jets), and demolished in 2010. “American Land”, one of two bonus tracks on the extended edition, was written when Springsteen was working on the 2006 Seeger Sessions. It shows the folk influence. A studio version was recorded back then, but never released. “Land of Hope and Dreams” was written in late 1998 and performed during the E Street Band’s reunion tour in 1999.

Bruce Springsteen

Wrecking Ball is one of those curious albums which sound less interesting the more you hear them. And I have been listening to it a lot. If the adage “less is more” means anything to you, musically, then this work is a good example of its corollary - “more is less.” Springsteen’s rock ‘n’ roll has often come over-dressed in a dense wall-of-sound wash. Combined with lyrics that are often preachy and tendentious, the result can be overwrought and bombastic.

On this album the production does the songs no favours; and there are some good songs here, but they suffer from similar, murky, over-the-top arrangements. It makes the music dull and lifeless. The strategy is generally the same throughout: begin with a laid-back, interesting couple of verses, where individual instruments can be heard; then, in the middle and again at the end, crank up the production into overdrive – guitars, keyboards, electronics, strings, horns and choir belting out a repetitive riff in which there is no space for individual elements to be heard or appreciated. The New York Chamber Consort (a sixteen-piece chamber ensemble) plays on three of the tracks, for example; but it’s difficult to hear much of what they’re playing. And five or six musicians are credited with playing horn-parts; frustratingly, their work too is buried in the mix. Tellingly, four of the songs here feature loops extracted from other recordings (folk and gospel) - and even the loops are hard to hear, buried as well in the murky mix.

So many opportunities lost. On the dirge-like “Jack Of All Trades”, for example, a horn section is added to the middle of the song. They sound a bit like a Salvation Army band, or an English colliery’s brass band. Featured up front, it would have sounded great, but they’re hiding in the mix. A tin whistle playing a riff through “Death to My Hometown” is also buried. Strangely, when an instrument is featured and placed front-and-centre – like Tom Morello’s guitar in “Jack Of All Trades” and “This Depression” (both solos are given special mention in the album’s booklet) - the results, really, are damp squibs.

Some of the arrangements, too, seem strangely at odds with the words: “Easy Money” and “Shackled and Drawn” are both downbeat lyrics, but they’re hammered out in perky productions that present them as upbeat sing-alongs; and “Death to my Hometown”, with words like a Michael Moore rant put to music (think Roger and Me), sounds like a perky sea shanty. Perhaps the problem is the dominance given to percussion – these tracks invariably feature drums-on-steroids. Combined with other electronic percussive effects, it sounds just too heavy on the beat to my ears.

The most interesting track here is the experimental one, “Rocky Ground” – the one production that’s different from the rest. There is a strong gospel tinge to much of the album, although the choir-like vocals are often just unison voices added as another element to the dense mix. In “Rocky Ground”, there is a kind of hip-hop/gospel blend, with Michelle Moore providing a brief rap. There are horns again in the mix, this time used more effectively. “There’s a new day coming”, Springsteen sings here, and it’s one of the more affecting moments in the album.

“Land of Hope and Dreams”, near the close of the album, attempts a kind of epic-statement that Springsteen is keen on. The track is notable for containing Clarence Clemons’ last work with Springsteen. The E Street Band’s sax player died in June, 2011. (Springsteen provides a written tribute to Clemons in the accompanying booklet). He plays a couple of typical solos in the middle and end of the track. The song is an extended train metaphor; the words sound trite and familiar: “This train carries saints and sinners; this train carries losers and winners; this train carries whores and gamblers …” Get on board. Take the ride. Etc., etc.

The back cover of the extended edition

What it comes down to, for me, I think, is that Springsteen too often sounds inauthentic. He’s striking a pose; making a statement; pushing a message. And even though I have no quarrel with the message, I don’t want to hear it declaimed like it’s preaching. Otherwise, it becomes pretentious. Effective when delivered live in concert at a huge sports arena - and he's a superb live performer - but ostentatious in the context of a rock ‘n’ roll recording. Springsteen fans will probably love this album. If you’re not always convinced that Bruce is the Boss, however, you might find your response more ambivalent – like mine.

Oh ... and the Ry Cooder? Stay tuned!