Next Stop: Dead Man's Town

Various Artist tribute albums are admittedly often a hit-and-miss affair. It's not for nothing that One Buck Records features a whole selection of reworked tribute albums - often thinned doqn editions to curb the spread and throw off the duffers. Various artist ributes to an artist's specific album aren't any different. I recently listened - obviously linked to Bruce and Born In The USA month on these pages - to Badlands, the tribute to Nebraska by a bunch of Americana artists, that got really good reviews back in the days, so I picked it up, but it never became a favorite. Something about it doesn't work. Today's album is obviously not about Nebraska, but Born In The USa, so e're off to Dead Man's Town, a 2014 tribute album by folk/country/Americana label Lightning Rod, that also doesn't quite work. Don't get me wrong, it works well enough, otherwise it wouldn't show up here - theme month or not - but yeah, something about this album makes it less than the sum of its parts. 

And the parts themselves should be really good. Aericana covers of Bruce featuring such house favorites as Jason Isbell and highly rated artists like Justin Townes 'Son Of Steve' Earle, Blitzen Trapper, Trampled By Turtles or Low. This thing should have been a freakin' slam dunk, and I thought it would be, rejoicing when I found it for little money during the famous soldes sales weeks. And it starts impressive enough, ith a slow, moody violin-led version of the title song by Jason Isbell and then-wife Amanda Shires, followed by...a slow, moody cover of "Cover Me" by The Apache Relay. Do you see where this is going? Yes, to get rid of the mainstream sheen and, let's say, populist stink of the original, almost all of the artists here have the same idea: play the song slow and moody. Which is fine, if you do it, and do it ell, but loses in efficacity, when half a dozen or more of your colleagues have the same idea. 

This, then, is Dead Man's Town's problem in a nutshell. In a vacuum, by themselves, these are all very fine versions of Bruce's songs, but the cumulative effect of having so many slow, moody covers makes the album come off a bit sleepy, as if it's permanently stuck in first gear. Thank god that the Quaker City Nighthaks find another gear for "Darlington County" - which admittedly would have sounded weird in slo-mo - and the North Mississippi All-Stars turn the elegiac "My Hometown" in a raucous uptempo coutry & western (or maybe rather cowpunk-adjacent) tune. 

So, Dead Man's Town is full of fine music which is just assembled less than perfectly. This is maybe an album where the shuffle function could come in handy, for a slightly more surprising listen. Sure, it won't suddenly pick up more pace in the abundance of slow numbers, but it's worth a try, maybe. Here Dead Man's Town is presented as is. And as is, sameyness and all, this is still a very nice collection of Springsteen cover tunes, especially if you're into the whole Americana thing. 

So, get ready, next exit: Dead Man's Town! 

PS: If the idea of Americana-flavored Bruce covers talks to you, check out For You, an Italian-artist compilation of exactly that, which features a couple of songs rarely covered elsewhere.