Customer Reviews

Hard Way

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This probably ranks as Steve's most overlooked album--hell, it's been deleted here in the States. Why? To be honest, I don't have a clue. It's a solid-to-spectacular 13-song set containing such long-lasting classics as "The Other Kind," "Promise You Anything," "Billy Austin," "Have Mercy" and "Justice in Ontario," which I rate amongst the best tracks Steve's ever recorded. Echoing "Copperhead Road," it compares and contrasts the story of Jim Donnelly (lynched a hundred years ago for a crime he didn't commit) to a more recent occurence in Ontario, where witnesses to a murder were brought up on charges and convicted. There's no saving grace, no kicker--just the cold, hard truth. In fact, "Justice" is at the heart of this album, following the Springsteen-like "Billy Austin" and preceding "Have Mercy," another overlooked gem. "Gem" is probably the wrong word... it's an addict's tale, true, but it does what the government and newspapers continually fail to do: Places a human face on statistics. Like the album as a whole, it's a compassionate, unflinching look at the dark side of the human spirit.

This was the last Steve Earle cd I thoroughly enjoyed and incidentally, was the last one he did (that we're aware of...)while indulging in the "ecstacies" of drug addiction. This Steve was emaciated, unpredictable, and, in my opinion, at the peak of his creativity. It was the last recording session that incorporated that trademark 80's Steve Earle sizzle : razor sharp, digital production, with what I consider to be the best version of the Dukes ever assembled, Steve's fiery, angry and deliberate vocal delivery, and guitar power that peeled the paint off the walls. Man, I miss that. The only "political" reference would be the anti-death penalty "Billy Austin" in which Earle sings, in the first person, about a 29 yr old that's "quarter Cherokee I'm told" who kills a service station attendant while robbing the place and won't say "...I don't deserve to die". Earle's gift has always been putting flesh on stories about real people in real life, dealing with real situations without being "preachy" and this work follows that direction. "Have Mercy" is a little collage of three different stories in which reasonably good people do bad things for reasons that we tend to offer a little mercy to once we've heard their perspectives. The opening track, "The Other Kind", is my favorite with classic lines galore: "I'm the apple of my Momma's eye, and my Daddy's worst fears realised". "Esmerelda's Hollywood" is a truly great piece of penmanship in which the title character is representative of the many young female hopefuls who came to Tinsel Land with big dreams and wound up ghosts, haunting the corner of Hollywood and Vine. I don't like the stuff Earle has done after "El Corazon" as it is too lo-fi and garagy sounding with Earle mumbling and hardly singing at all; I dearly love everything from "The Hard Way" back: full of fire, hunger, and an intense desire to portray simple life as if it were on the big screen of a small town drive-in. John Steinbeck would have been proud.

*The Hard Way* may be the album that cost Earle his job with MCA, but for music fans looking for genuinely hard hitting lyrics supported by high-power guitar and drum work, it's one of the best albums any artist in any genre has ever produced. If you've only experienced Steve Earle's recent work, this album is a critical addition to your collection. *The Hard Way* is a definitive masterpiece of pre-Warner Bros. Steve Earle.

The only one of Earle's major label records out of print in America, The Hard Way was Earle's Big Rock Move, with that mid-to-late 80s sheen to the production and arrangements that lean towards Springsteenish populist bombast. It has only a handful of classics, including the deliberately silly "Regular Guy," the melodramatic "Esmeralda's Hollywood" and "Justice in Ontario" and the vicious "The Other Kind," my personal fave. It also has "Billy Austin," a character study of a convicted killer on death row that presaged his future political obsession with the death penalty. As the reviewer below notes, this is not the Earle album to start with, but diehard fans have gotta have it. Not a great album, but not a bad one either.

I seem to be constitutionally unable to give a Steve Earle album anything other than five stars, but it's not difficult to do once you've given his work a listen. "The Hard Way" continues in the Steve Earle tradition of eminently listenable tracks, all of which have the added bonus of literate, crushingly good lyrics. Earle may sum up his family's worst fears about him in the brilliant line from "The Other Kind" in which he sings, "I'm still the apple of my mama's eye/I'm my daddy's worst fears realized." One of the last albums Earle recorded before a substantial stint in jail, "The Hard Way" seems to address his need to do everything, well, the hard way. If there's an easy way to do it, he generally doesn't want anything to do with it. As always, Earle is fascinated with and inspired by life on the road, as evidenced in his Foghat/Thin Lizzie-tinged "This Highway's Mine (Roadmaster)." "Billy Austin" tells the story of a young man in jail. Earle, as always, manages to squeeze a world of detail into just a few words: "My name is Billy Austin/I'm twenty-nine years old/I was born in Oklahoma/Quarter Cherokee I'm told." "Have Mercy" and "When People Find Out" address Earle's ongoing wrestling match with heroin addiction--a match that, by the look of the album's cover photograph, he hadn't yet won. Even though he's going down by this album, Earle manages to turn out what lesser mortals wouldn't be able to produce in their finest hours.

I consider many of Steve's albums to be 5 Star work, including El Corazon, Jerusalem, TransBlues, Revolution, most of the rest fall into my 4 Star category. I really like most of the songs on this album but the production is not up to usual standards. The vocals sound as though they're bouncing out of a cave and the percussion on a number of songs is annoying at best, the drummer apparently in love with a rat-a-tat-tat riff that overpowers the music. Overall, though, worth owning and a must for competists.

Steve Earle has been called "The Outlaw Country Singer," but I'd prefer to call him "The Hot-blooded Hillbilly." His voice is closer to the hills of Tennessee than the Black Hat Nashville Boys that make up the Top-10 Country Chart. The Hard Way rocks like the tough hitting music of early Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. You'll also find heavy doses of Bruce Springsteen craftsmanship (Promise You Anything, Hopeless Romantics). The blues guitar grove on `West Nashville Boogie' would make B. B. King proud. No one has charged a two-step dance number with as much electricity as "Regular Guy.' And `When The People Find Out' is so spiritual that it would be welcome in any God-fearin' Southern Baptist Church.

Steve and The Dukes may rock with the brawn of a Peterbuilt, but Steve's lyrics have a softer touch. It's not necessary to listen to `Hopeless Romantics' to realize that Steve is, well, a sensitive guy. You may give a second thought concerning the death penalty after the poignant `Billy Austin.' And the miscarriage of vigilante justice is examined in `Justice In Ontario.' Lastly, `Close You Eyes' is a solemn anthem to living one day at a time. Steve Earle does just that - making kinetic music like there was no tomorrow.

Technical note: The original 1990 MCA release is a flawless DDD recording.

The title of the album probably best describes how Steve was doing things when this album was released. I think this album along with Copperhead Road & his earlier releases are definitely his best works. Personally this album is one of my favorite Steve Earle albums & should be in any true Steve Earle cd collection.

I picked this up when I was either 16 or 17, I really don't remember, but I know that I had picked it up because it had "The Other Kind" and "Billy Austin". I'd first heard these tunes way back when, when my dad was addicted to Seve's live album, "Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator" (for any of ya'll who haven't heard it, stop reading this right now and pick it up).

Since Steve has never had what I would call a "bad" album, it was no surprise that this was such a consistent listen. The aforementioned "The Other Kind" is a classic in it's own right and "Billy Austin" will still make your blood freeze. Other gems include "Esmerelda's Hollywood", "Promise You Anything", and "Regular Guy". This one definitely holds its own as one of his best recordings despite the living hell that he was going through at the time of recording.

I still reccommend picking up "Transcendental Blues" or "Aint Ever Satisfied" if you're new to Steve, but still, no Steve Earle collection is complete without this one.

Earle's 4th MCA effort was released after his enormous crossover success of Copperhead Road, which ironically opened Earle up to an entirely new (and financially more rewarding) young rock audience and caused him to state (in the liner notes) that he needed to 'find another dream-fast.' Even with Earle in the depths of his drug addiction when this CD was released, there are some quite impressive tunes here. The prophetic, rocking "I'm The Other Kind" defiantly proclaims his refusal to conform or find success traveling well-trodden paths. The ascerbic "Esmerelda's Hollywood" and "Country Girl" are biting satires of west coast LA life, drawn from Earle's LA days. One of his berst tunes is here, "Billy Austin," a powerful ballad posing this question-who is better: convicted murder or executioner? (A theme later revived for the soundtrack of "Dead Man Walking.") His voice is less than stellar, but given the circumstances, the fact that he produced anything musical at all is miraculous.