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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2005
Some albums are declared "dated" or "timeless" based on particular qualities (lyrics, instrumentation, production gimmickry) that either trap them in cultural amber or leave them curiously unscathed by musical faddishness. But The Band's eponymous second LP (now reissued with greatly improved sound, penetrating liner notes, and some decent but inessential bonus tracks) is that rarest of things: an album that exists OUTSIDE of time, or rather *in* but not *of* it.
Let me explain. This disc was written, recorded and released in 1969, but could just as plausibly have come from 1869. The songs (gorgeously played slices of Americana, all) do indeed speak of certain historical events - Stoneman's raids and a visit from General Robert E. Lee near the end of the Civil War in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" to name one, the coming of rural trade unionism in "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" to name another - but the music and performance stands eerily outside the continuum of actual CHRONOLOGICAL time, and instead gestures towards a permanent, idealized near-mythical imagining of American history.
It's rather amazing, really: Robbie Robertson and his cohorts, having fully absorbed the American folk tradition, have reorganized it as an impressionistic snapshot history of the United States in sepia-tone. Given the preternatural way in which every single song on the album fully and flawlessly evokes American folk images and myths while simultaneously remaining effortlessly modern - again, a product of its times but still not of them - it's either deeply ironic or perfectly predictable that this most American of albums was written and performed by four Canadians (plus one Razorback). I'm still not sure which.
What IS beyond doubt, however, is that The Band is a landmark in the history of modern American music, and one which the group themselves could never live up to in later years. It is one of the very few albums I've ever owned that has a palpable aura and mystique; absorb it in all of its impossible perfection and you will feel like a magic spell is being worked upon you. To embrace the sweet cadences of "Rockin' Chair," to join in singing the ragged communal harmonies of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," or to plunge into the darting guitar figures which represent the deceptive moral choice posited by "King Harvest"...to do these things is to delve into the joyful enigmas of the United States' own founding myths.
History as mystery. Not bad for an 11-song piece of vinyl, really.
Let me explain. This disc was written, recorded and released in 1969, but could just as plausibly have come from 1869. The songs (gorgeously played slices of Americana, all) do indeed speak of certain historical events - Stoneman's raids and a visit from General Robert E. Lee near the end of the Civil War in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" to name one, the coming of rural trade unionism in "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" to name another - but the music and performance stands eerily outside the continuum of actual CHRONOLOGICAL time, and instead gestures towards a permanent, idealized near-mythical imagining of American history.
It's rather amazing, really: Robbie Robertson and his cohorts, having fully absorbed the American folk tradition, have reorganized it as an impressionistic snapshot history of the United States in sepia-tone. Given the preternatural way in which every single song on the album fully and flawlessly evokes American folk images and myths while simultaneously remaining effortlessly modern - again, a product of its times but still not of them - it's either deeply ironic or perfectly predictable that this most American of albums was written and performed by four Canadians (plus one Razorback). I'm still not sure which.
What IS beyond doubt, however, is that The Band is a landmark in the history of modern American music, and one which the group themselves could never live up to in later years. It is one of the very few albums I've ever owned that has a palpable aura and mystique; absorb it in all of its impossible perfection and you will feel like a magic spell is being worked upon you. To embrace the sweet cadences of "Rockin' Chair," to join in singing the ragged communal harmonies of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," or to plunge into the darting guitar figures which represent the deceptive moral choice posited by "King Harvest"...to do these things is to delve into the joyful enigmas of the United States' own founding myths.
History as mystery. Not bad for an 11-song piece of vinyl, really.
