Jennifer Warnes - Jennifer (1972)

Third and easily best solo album by American singer/songwriter Jennifer Warnes, whose career trajectory is weird enough to briefly summarize here. She started out in the late 60s as a folk-rocker singing slightly overwrought covers. Sometimes in the early 70s, she caught the attention of some pretty cool people: her third album (this one) was produced by John Cale, and she joined up with Leonard Cohen, playing in his band and contributing to a bunch of his records over the course of the next five decades. Her ensuing solo records, on the other hand, while moderately commercially successful, were as middle-of-the-road as it gets. In the 80s, she briefly carved out a niche for herself singing the female part on massive hit duets written for movies. First, it was the dreadful "Up Where We Belong", then it was "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", both of which went to #1. Like I said, weird career. [EDIT: Thanks to a commenter, I now know that she also sings on Arthur Russell's "That's Us/Wild Combination", literally one of the best, most beautiful songs ever recorded.]

Anyway, the album. Her best solo record by a wide margin, it consists of the kind of folky pop-rock that dominated the charts in the early 70s, but there's stylistic range beneath the surface -- over the course of three tracks, she jumps from sunny country rock to an ethereal take on Donovan's "Sand and Foam" to a  smoldering, soulful rendition of Free's "Be My Friend" without missing a beat. This can probably partially be attributed to Cale's pitch-perfect production; Warnes' pristine vocals, which are far more subtle and expressive than on her previous efforts; and great songs, which include a Cale original ("Empty Bottles") and Warnes' own take on the now-iconic "These Days". It's not gonna change your life, but it's a really nice listen.

Track listing:

1. In the Morning

2. P.F. Sloan

3. Empty Bottles

4. Sand and Foam

5. Be My Friend

6. Needle and Thread

7. Last Song

8. All My Love's Laughter

9. These Days

10. Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)

The simple act of an oar's stroke put diamonds in the sea

Also listen to:

Christine Perfect - Christine Perfect (1974)

Dion - Born to Be with You (1974)

Mikko Joensuu - Amen 1 (2016)

Gorgeous heartache from Finnish songwriter Mikko Joensuu. On Amen 1, Joensuu zooms in on the often-subtle ethereality of classic country music and, with patient songwriting and spacious, string-and-reverb-heavy production, elevates it to impossibly bright, positively sublime new territory. It's a bit surreal to hear a Finn take on such an American style of music, but as far as I'm concerned, he's doing it as well as anyone's done it in years.

Track listing:
1. Enjoy It While It Lasts
2. Sometimes You Have to Go Far
3. Warning Sign
4. Closer My God
5. I'd Give You All
6. Thief and a Liar
7. Take Me Home Oh Lord
8. Valley of Gold

Shiver down my spine as I think of that place
When a wretch like me felt amazing grace

You might also like:

Mickey Newbury -
'Frisco Mabel Joy (1971)

Azure Ray -
November (2002)

Jeff Cowell - Lucky Strikes and Liquid Gold (1975)

Tear-stained, bourbon-soaked outsider country/folk rock perfection. Recorded in 1975 and left to languish unheard until 2015, when Numero did us all a huge favor by giving it a proper release. Goddamn, what a beautiful fucking record.

Track listing:
1. Jake Lake
2. Momma
3. Go Sweetly
4. And When
5. Lucky Strikes and Liquid Gold
6. We All Know
7. Bring Me Back
8. Can't Make Nothin'
9. Joanne & Jason
10. Not Down This Low

Down in the gutter where I found my true love

Also listen to:

Andy Zwerling -
Spiders in the Night (1971)

Lee Clayton -
Lee Clayton (1973)

Mickey Newbury - 'Frisco Mabel Joy (1971)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:
Mickey Newbury - A Long Road Home (2002)

Probably my all-time favorite country record. Acoustic guitars, sweeping string sections, the occasional gauzy synth, and haunted, reverb-drenched vocals. It's masterful tearjerker after masterful tearjerker, reaching an apex with "Frisco Depot", whose long-way-from-home desolation could draw tears from a stone.

Track listing:
1. An American Trilogy
2. How Many Times (Must the Piper Be Paid for His Song?)
3. Interlude
4. The Future's Not What It Used to Be
5. Mobile Blue
6. Frisco Depot
7. You're Not My Same Sweet Baby
8. Interlude
9. Remember the Good
10. Swiss Cottage Place
11. How I Love Them Old Songs

Frisco's a full day from home when you can afford to fly
But it might as well be the moon when you're as broke as I

You would probably also like:

Lee Clayton -
Lee Clayton (1973)

Iris DeMent -
Infamous Angel (1992)

Iris DeMent - Infamous Angel (1992)

Glorious, traditional, folk-tinged country. From sweet lil' ditties like "Hotter Than Mojave in My Heart" to achingly beautiful, positively heartbreaking ballads like "Our Town", Infamous Angel is a more-or-less perfect, criminally overlooked record. For your sake, dear reader, I really hope you're not one of those dicks who "likes every kind of music except for country."

Track listing:
1. Let the Mystery Be
2. These Hills
3. Hotter Than Mojave in My Heart
4. When Love Was Young
5. Our Town
6. Fifty Miles of Elbow Room
7. Infamous Angel
8. Sweet Forgiveness
9. After You're Gone
10. Mama's Opry
11. Higher Ground

Up the street beside that red neon light
That's where I met my baby on one hot summer night
He was the tender and I ordered a beer
It's been forty years and I'm still sitting here

If you like this, try:

Charlie Louvin -
The Kind of Man I Am (1969)

Mickey Newbury -
A Long Road Home (2002)

Rusty Wier - Stoned, Slow, Rugged (1974)

Picked up this lil' gem of hard livin', heart-broken country/Southern rock based entirely upon the album title. Didn't even hit the listening station. Figured, how could I possibly not like an album called Stoned, Slow, Rugged? As you have surely surmised, my instincts served me well.

Track listing:
1. Whiskey Still/Whiskey Man
2. Easier to Hurt
3. Texas Morning
4. Painted Lady
5. Busted
6. Stoned, Slow, Rugged
7. Jeremiah Black
8. Country Style
9. Cobey's Song
10. Railroad

Outside the sun is up
The wind, it blows me like a paper cup
Down the highway

You'll probably also enjoy:

Lee Clayton - Lee Clayton (1973)

Mickey Newbury - A Long Road Home (2002)

Charlie Louvin - The Kind of Man I Am (1969)

I'm been flying solo while my lady does a bunch of cool stuff back east, and as is so often the case when this happens, I'm finding myself drawn to old-school songs of heartbreak, because I am a fucking ball of cheese. There's nothing particularly inventive or edge-y about this album of 60's-style pop country but the songs are super solid (especially mega-bummers like "What Are Those Things" and "Life to Go") and Louvin's deep croon is immaculate as ever.

Track listing:
1. The Kind of Man I Am
2. She Called Me Baby
3. Yesterday's Letters
4. After Awhile
5. Until My Dreams Come True
6. Won't You Come Home and Talk to a Stranger
7. Let's Put Our World Back Together
8. Hungry Eyes
9. What Are Those Things (With Big Black Wings)
10. Life to Go
11. Millions Years Or So

What are those things with big black wings
Circling, descending from up overhead?
Lie to me tell me that they're only robins
Tell me that your love for me will never be dead

You might also want to try:

Muleskinner - Muleskinner (1972)

Lee Clayton - Lee Clayton (1973)

Lee Clayton - Lee Clayton (1973)

Something about the hard drinking, hard times, and heartbreak of classic country just sounds better when it's coming from a relative unknown artist, doesn't it? It's just so easy to picture Clayton hitting the bar after playing a phenomenal set at a sparsely attended honkey tonk, knocking back whiskey, smoking Lucky Strikes, and getting wistful about the latest woman to have passed through his life the same way he passes through town after town. Essentially, I'm imagining his life to very closely resemble the plot of Crazy Heart.

This is a man whose song, "Ladies Love Outlaws", a hit for Waylon Jennings, was at least partially responsible for the term "outlaw country." Every song on his early albums is an absolute gem, and the fact that he never got famous is as heartbreaking as the words to "Bottles of Booze". His second album, Border Affair, is possibly even better than this one, in that some of its songs add Thin Lizzy-style twin guitar leads to the mix, but since it's already readily available at the Rockasteria blog, I'll contribute this nevertheless excellent record to the blogosphere.

Track listing:
1. Carnival Balloon
2. Bottles of Booze
3. Henry McCarty
4. New York City Suite 409
5. Mama, Spend the Night with Me
6. Red Dancing Dress
7. Danger
8. Lonesome Whiskey
9. Ladies Love Outlaws

Set me up, bartender, with as much fun as I can use

Mickey Newbury - A Long Road Home (2002)

Tearjerking country from sadly departed country great Mickey Newbury. A Long Road Home is the last album that Newbury completed before his death in September of 2002, and his preoccupation with mortality and half-bitter, misty-eyed retrospection certainly gives the listener the impression that he knew that it might be his final musical statement. His gentle picking and quavering voice are given a lush backdrop of violin, cello, synthesizer, banjo, mandolin, piano, and ethereal backing vocals. While all of the songs are strong, the real gems here are the over 10-minute-long first and penultimate tracks, each of which is an incredible showcase of weatherbeaten, downcast, big-hearted, bittersweet songwriting.

Track listing:
1. In '59
2. I Don't Love You
3. The Last Question (In the Dead of the Night)
4. Here Comes the Rain, Baby
5. One More Song of Hearts and Flowers
6. A Moment with Heather
7. Where Are You Darlin' Tonight
8. So Sad
9. Maybe
10. A Long Road Home
11. 116 Westfield Street

Hoist the sails, Bud, to hell with the breeze
Prayed for a wind that will bend every tree
And a storm that will bring every man to his knee
Here's to the howlin' sea
Here's to tomorrow, and here's to today
Here's to whatever I never could say
Here's to the piper, the bastard's been paid

Phil Ochs - Greatest Hits (1970)

Phil Ochs is known best as a hugely influential figure in the world of American protest music, whose songs inspired countless activists to (momentarily) put down their picket signs and pick up acoustic guitars; many might consider this a dubious honor. However, starting in 1967 with the godly Pleasures of the Harbor, Ochs' music blossomed into an ornate, symphonically embellished folk-rock-pop-country hybrid, and his lyrics began to take on a more personal, and often darker tone. As the story goes, he was also drinking a lot and popping Valium. By the time he recorded his swansong, Greatest Hits - it's a studio album, not a collection - he was writing bizarre, haunted, escapist country rock songs that featured soulful female backup singers, saxophones, pedal steel, and a conspicuous sense that Ochs was consciously alienating himself from his musical past. As you can see, he'd also started wearing a gold lamé, Elvis-inspired suit.

Note: This reissued version doesn't include "Ten Cents a Coup", the only overtly political song on the original album, and the track order is slightly altered. IMO it's more effective this way.

Track listing:
1. One Way Ticket Home
2. Jim Dean of Indiana
3. My Kingdom for a Car
4. Boy in Ohio
5. Gas Station Woman
6. Basket in the Pool
7. Chords of Fame
8. No More Songs / Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & Me

I'll talk, I'll talk
They live by the sea
Surrounded by a cemetary

Muleskinner - Muleskinner (1973)

My fluffy 'lil warrior, Toast, is dying of lung cancer, and I am very, very sad. He's sitting next to me, purring and wheezing, and I am trying not to burst into tears. Consequently, I can only listen to music that funnels its bitter, tear-stained sorrow into catchy, upbeat songs. This is one of those albums. Living in Portland has burnt me out on bluegrass - fucking everyone feels like they need to play it at their restaurant/coffee shop/BBQ - but this I love.

Track listing:
1. Mule Skinner Blues
2. Blue and Lonesome
3. Footprints in the Snow
4. Dark Hollow
5. Whitehouse Blues
6. Opus 57 in G Minor
7. Runways of the Moon
8. Roanoke
9. Rain and Snow
10. Soldier's Joy
11. Blue Mule

He walks the runways of the moon
And he fears he runs condemned
Condemned to wander out of rooms
Of loved ones and of friends
I walk his phantom footprints
From a cloudless point of view
Oh, can't he find a place to stand
To catch a glimpse of you