Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade
New urban folk boom
There was a time when Steve Earle would have been expected to set every bridge ablaze behind him as he took the Hillbilly Highway out of Nashville. But on his first album since relocating to New York City, he doesn’t look back so much as look ahead — to life in his multiethnic city of dreams where the ghosts of Woody Guthrie and Joey Ramone still whisper their messages in dark corners. The shambling rhythms of Dust Brother John King’s production distinguish Serenade’s urban folk from its more country-minded predecessors, but Guy Clark and Hank Williams still hold as much sway in his songs as Eric Andersen and Pete Seeger do. It’s an outsider’s album, to be sure — from his arrival in the city to his reluctance to believe that his wife loves him as much as she seems to — but Earle has always relished that role and continues to do so. (* * *)
>>Sample: Days Aren’t Long Enough, a duet with wife Allison Moorer; City of Immigrants, with Brazilian neo-folk group Forro in the Dark
>>Skip: Come Home to Me
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