Complicated Game - James McMurtry (2015)
February through the years: on the Feb 2015 playlist, along with Murder By Death, Andrew Bird, and Ghostface & BADBADNOTGOOD
Just found out this morning that McMurtry is the son of Lonesome Dove and Last Picture Show author Larry McMurtry. That makes sense, for the novelistic detail and approach he takes to getting inside his characters’ heads.
There’s a bit of the country singer’s itinerant wanderer tradition in McMurtry, but there’s also the gleeful sadsack dark humor of Warren Zevon, as well as some of the classic-country-derived structural elegance of The Poet.
There’s nothing flashy about McMurtry. He’s not an amazing singer and his band isn’t a virtuose bluegrass operation. But he cuts deep with his stories of the little people caught in the grip of modern life.
Tracks I Liked
How I’m Gonna Find You Now - channeling a little Steve Earle along with all the other outsider country energy. We don’t need to talk about how often I actually do “wash down a blood pressure pill with Red Bull.”
South Dakota - he’s talking about the other end of South Dakota from where I live, but holy shit. A great study of the way the harsh weather around here serves both metaphorically and literally to bring hard times.
