Customer Reviews

One Endless Night

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I came across this album listening to samples at a local music store. As soon as I heard the first few chords and the raw, unaffected voice coming through the headphones I was hooked. Listening to this album is akin to reading Lonesome Dove for the first time. It is genuine and unadulterated, as Texas was before high rises and shaky banks. True Americana, like pure cajun, blues, gospel or Appalachian Spring. My only wish was that this guy would become as popular as all those Nashville, dime-a-dozen cut-outs that sell millions of albums year in and year out. Jimmie Dale Gilmour is a true troubador of sagebrush and melancholy. He's a poet in other words and can play guitar like an angel. Like another reviewer here, I just hope his other albums measure up to this one, because I've discovered a new favorite.

A welcome return to form after the extremely overproduced and disappointing "Braver Newer World". Moving off of a major label seems to have freed JDG up to record the songs he loves to sing (many selections here will be very familiar to those who have seen him live over the last several years), and the results show him to his best advantage. This is an incredibly strong selection of songs played well and sung better (both by JDG and an alt-country fan's dream lineup of backup vocalists). There is plenty of the high lonesome mystic prairie folk cowboy stuff that JDG does so well on display here, but the most pleasant surprise is the expansion of his sound to incorporate a few songs that unequivocally and convincingly rock (including the sizzling Townes Van Zandt cover and a bonus track that's actually worth listening to). My only complaints are the intrusive drumming that mars a few cuts, and a slight letdown over "Your Love Is my Rest", one of my all-time favorite John Hiatt songs, which has been recast here as sort of a West-Texas power ballad. That being said, there is nothing that stops me from wholeheartedly recommending this album.

ONE ENDLESS NIGHT is another beautiful record from Jimmie Dale. Buddy Miller does a superb job of co-production. My favorite track is "Goodbye Old Missoula," which I heard on the radio while waking up one morning shortly after 6 AM before the album was released -- an incredible song. I have one reservation, though, about the return to a mainly traditional sound on this album, the same basic sound found on AFTER AWHILE (1991) and SPINNING AROUND THE SUN (1993).

It made me mad when I learned that in some quarters J.D.'s last album, BRAVER NEW WORLD (1996 -- see my review), had been savaged because it departed from "what a Jimmie Dale Gilmore album is supposed to sound like." BRAVER NEWER WORLD is a stunning album, incorporating Beatles-esque pop (see my review), and I personally like it better than this new one -- T Bone Burnette's production is fantastic, and in retrospect it is the powerful completion of a '90s trilogy on Elektra following AFTER AWHILE and SPINNING AROUND THE SUN. I hope Jimmie Dale will return to a broader pallette of sounds in the future, and not be stifled by narrow-minded critics and fans.

(verified purchase from Salt City CDs in Salt Lake City)

Possessor of one of the most unique voices in all of music, Gilmore puts together a stellar release for his own label. Co-producing with Buddy Miller, Gilmore collects songs by John Hiatt, Butch Hancock, Willis Alan Ramsey, Jesse Winchester, the Grateful Dead, and others - and made each song his own. It's the space he puts in recording that give the songs a big impact, allowing his mysterious high plains voice room to infuse his tales of romance, dust, and loss. On his ghostly version of "Mack the Knife," the air is laced with the chill of the assassin's presence. Other tracks like "Banks of the Guadalupe" and the title song seep into you and allow you to exhale, comfortable to the very soul. Gilmore's sense of lyrical profundity among common themes shines brightly on the Townes Van Zandt gem "No Lonesome Tune" (currently my favorite cut on the CD). If this is not Gilmore's best album, it's in the top two.

Before country music became all about the Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain and Garth Brooks (quality performers all ... if you think quality and unit sales amount to the same thing), it used to be called Country & Western music.

This terrific collection of songs performed with heartfelt honesty and effortless grace by Jimmie Dale Gilmore harkens back to the now-missing second portion of that musical equation. If you like your songs superlative, your arrangements simple and your singers sincere, you're a candidate for being wowed by this throwback artist, whose nasal twang and obvious earnestness just might be able to cure even the most hidebound cynic. "Ripple" and the title cut are the best of a stellar bunch.

I have an amazon parrot named Rocky. When I play Jimmie Dale's "One Endless Night" CD, Rocky stops dead in his tracks and listens fixated, like I do. This is an EXCELLENT album. I never heard of JD before but Amazon.com pushed a recommendation to me and I tried it. I will buy the rest of Jimmies albums as a result.

I work in a place you could call cubicle city. You have to listen to music with head phones so as not to bother your fellow cubicle prisoners. I have been asked by people 5 cublicles away to stop humming. I'm sure I will hear something official from HR about not humming. You can not help but sing along and foot tap with this album. Good job, Jimmie!

If you ask me what kind of music I like I'm liable to say "anything but heavy metal and C&W". Well, I'm just glad Barnes and Noble doesn't categorize the CDs on its listening station otherwise I might never have picked this up. If this is C&W I'd better open my mind a little more, because it is absolutely entrancing. Gilmore's unearthly voice stops you dead in your tracks from the first second, then the voice and the music just take hold and don't let go. The songs are so simple, warm and familiar it's like sitting in your favourite armchair, yet at the same time it's the freshest sound I've heard in ages. I've never been to Texas but this CD is so evocative I can practically smell it.

I'm a world beat fan, but sometimes on my fav public radio station they'll play something different just to shake you up (or stop you from shaking) and they played Gilmore's cover of Mack the Knife. Wow. Stopped me in my tracks (well, I was actually driving the 405 passing West Hollywood). I felt like I was listening to a ghost story; his version is so far from the usual pop or Broadway take on this song, that I wondered if he had rewritten it. But no. The rest of the album is probably more intended for afficianados of folk/country, but I came away with a lot of respect for his work in this genre. Didn't realize how closed-minded I'd been.

Jimme Dale Gilmore has the distinct ability of making albums that seem to flow naturally as if he inherently knows how the song should be sung and arranged without rehersal or slick production. Only great artists know how to do this. Artists that come to mind are the Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers), Grateful Dead (American Beauty) and The Band (anything they ever did). Listening to Jimmie Dale Gilmore is a great investment, because with each listen you will reap a reward. All of the songs on this album are rewarding, especially the title track. Hopefully, this album will bring Jimmie the mainstream credit he surely deserves. He is an American treasure!

This is the music that shakes us from the endless procession of "generic country" that parades across the airwaves. Gilmore is an example of the time when fans could identify which artist by the sound of his voice. There isn't a bad cut on this CD. This is music for anyone who likes the best.