Customer Reviews

You Can't Relive the Past

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say this may be the best work Eric Andersen has ever done. Beautifully written, hauntingly performed with some of his best singing ever. The folk-oriented songs are some of the strongest & most mature he's written, while the blues songs are a bold experiment (and how many artists with a 35-year-career behind them are still experimenting?) that pay off beautifully. More people deserve to know about this one...any fan of Eric Andersen, Townes Van Zandt, Dylan, or any kind of folk/blues music will love this. Buy it...you won't regret it.

Eric Andersen has struck gold with You Can't Relive the Past. I love the variety of song styles, and my favorite song is "Eyes of the Immigrant", both for its theme and its gorgeous lyrics and melody. Its opening reminds me of "Moonchild River Song" from years back. Every Eric Andersen fan should buy this CD immediately-it's great!

This record maintains and sustains a certain kind of belief in a core unity of American songwriting. Stylistically varied, to be sure, but of a piece in the hands of a master. Andersen may not have had as strong of an impact on the culture as contemporaries Bob Dylan or Lou Reed, but who cares? His art has the same unflinching honesty and fearlessness. Just buy it.

Buy this cd! It is a most interesting piece of art. The songs are like succulent ingredients combined together and served up like a gourmet feast! It is a wonderful feast for the ears and heart. It traces back to the days when music didn't have to be technologically complicated to be great. Kudos to Mr. Andersen.

This artist was previously relatively unknown to me; at about the same time as I bought this CD I realized the importance of the blues to the music of the Woodstock Era. There are an abundance of riches here, one of the least noticed of which may be the backing female vocal. The CD is evenly divided into blues and other songs; the two best blues songs, "Night Train" and "Gonna Go Crazy" are also funny while a third, "The Blue March," tries to be a major work about New Orleans and falls a little short in my opinion. But there is much more. There are the two opening songs, each of which is a song of considerable merit. There are two minor-keyed ballads, "Meadowlark" and "The Road"; there are three other songs of considerable passion: "Dear Mama", "Cold Country" "Magdalena" and also several other blues songs.

Eric Andersen is a great writer with a terrific baritone voice that infuses a sense of haunting melancholy into his songs. It is a great, great instrument in the service of his folk or Norwegian heritage material, but somehow isn't quite the ticket for the blues based in Northern Mississippi. The several tracks here recorded with Sam Carr, Super Chickan and Kenny Brown, all colleagues of R. L. Burnside, just down come across as anything other than noble efforts. The songs themselves don't really fit Burnside's posse anyway, but it somehow seems that once you take this music off the porch and put it in a studio, the sanitization takes something away. Andersen is a good bit more erudite than Burnside, and that actually doesn't help. Burnisde and the Northern Mississippi heritage are ever and always about that feral moan, at times deeply painful at times sexually playful. The collaboration with Townes Van Sandt is the best of these tunes. The other "blues" numbers are respectful but not convincing. This is blues music for people who go to folk festivals and think somehow they're gettin down. I guess....

Which brings us back to the other tunes, all of which are terrific songs, with the possible exception of the title track, aided and abetted by Lou Reed, and that's not a good thing either. Lou is fine in Lou's world. Out of that, he tends to leaden the proceedings, and he's no harmonist. Elsewhere Lucy Kaplansky is just amazing, and that seems to underscore how overlooked she is. Her efforts with Eric's songs are absolutely what is required. The standout track here is "Meadowlark", a nostalgic recollection of the road north to Canada. Everything about this piece is filled with Eric's remarkable craft, and the longing for one's home is especially poignantly delivered.
So, this is a disc that somewhat suffers from trying to be too many things. At the time of its release, Burnside was in ascendancy on the music radar, but it's one thing to respect that world, and sometimes you should leave it at that.

This was my first dive into the Eric Anderson catalog. Boy, what a find. This guy is really good. He is helped along on one track by Lou Reed. He is a good singer with some decent musicianship. This is a strong album and I'm looking forward to purchasing more CD's by Anderson.