Songs From the Badlands

A collection of songs from the badlands of the USA, redolent of trailer parks and long lonely windswept roads as opposed to an urban city landscape. I came across this album towards the end of my interest in any new rock music, probably from one of the last times that I bought a magazine like Mojo. Although dating from 1991, it was still "new" and "relevant" in my mind and so it was a bit of a shock last year to hear of the death through cancer of the by then middle aged Chris Whitley. This album, Living With The Law, may well have been his debut and I didn't keep up with his career which never made a major breakthrough to a mass market but which seemed to have developed a solid cult following through to the end. It's a very atmospheric album, recorded in New Orleans and with that echoey Daniel Lanois style sound world typical of the era, although Lanois' only direct involvement was to play guitar on one track. Whitley plays distinctive National steel guitar as well as regular electric. The steel guitar settings are expert and the electric sounds rely more on atmosphere and effects than on clusters of notes. The whole disk could be the sound track to some low budget alternative movie set on the Louisiana Texas border, undoubtedly bluesy without being in any way a blues album. Despite having lost track of his subsequent career, I think Living With The Law remained a career high and one to be proud of.