Artist: Various Artists
Album: Too Late to Pray: Defiant Chicago Roots
Label: Bloodshot Records
Release Date: 11.8.19
Strays that can’t help chasing after the purest taste of traditional country twang and spirited punk-rock rebellion keep showing up at Bloodshot Records’ door, and the beloved label doesn’t mind taking them in. Home to well-established folk heroes like The Mekons’ Jon Langford, as well as talented newcomers trafficking in bluegrass, folk, country and western, rockabilly, blues and roots-rock, Bloodshot set out in 1994 to give the Windy City’s uniquely subversive Americana underground a greater voice and impassioned documentation, starting with that year’s wild and wooly compilation For a Life of Sin: Insurgent Chicago Country. It’s a scene and an establishment that’s always had a rowdy crowd and an abundance of colorful storytellers.
With shoulders as big and broad as those of its fabled hometown, Bloodshot Records commemorates its 25th anniversary with an absolutely essential 22-track companion piece, Too Late to Pray: Defiant Chicago Roots, that lives in the now and has compellingly realistic and relatable tales to tell. Even though old, familiar faces like Langford and The Handsome Family make memorable appearances, with the former leading his Hillbilly Lovechild on an infectiously shambolic ride through the rousing cow-punk of “I Am a Big Town” and the latter drowning in the golden, baritone liquor and electronic squiggles and whistles of their languid remake of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song,” the well-curated collection props up current artists, too.
From bluegrass upstarts Big Sadie comes a lovely, mournful ballad “You Never Told Me” that is gently rendered with a rustic workshop of instruments, using acoustic guitar, banjo and weathered violin as artisanal tools. As its tough, wounded heart breaks in an honest portrayal of a fractured relationship still visible in the rearview mirror, the song pointedly asks, “Are you back in bed with sorrow? She always was your closest friend.” Sadness also hangs around Half Gringa’s affecting, world-weary “Wearing White” as it spirals down a well of darkness, while the more renowned Freakwater plucks out a spare version of The Rolling Stones’ “Sway” on lonely, silvery banjo that’s intimate and captivating.
Going further afield, the collection takes a quick detour into trashy, garage-rock psychedelia with ROOKIE’s warped and slightly fluorescent cover of Tears For Fears’ “Head Over Heels” and The Dyes’ shaking and simmering take on the classic standard “Liza Jane.” Smooth rhinestone cowboys Wild Earp & The Free For Alls lament a vanishing scene in the upbeat, country-western rodeo “The Last Honky Tonk in Chicago,” as The Hoyle Brothers go to work in similar fashion kicking up a floor of sawdust in an awfully tight and catchy two-step “A Little Bit of Buck” and David Quinn drives on through “Long Time Gone” with locomotive industry.
On this journey, with all of its diverse scenery, barroom bluster and mix of rural and urban sensibilities, there are moments of sheer joy, nostalgic wonder and reflective contemplation. Erupting in a sunny, contagious Appalachian riot, The Family Gold’s “The Sun is Going Down” dances with reckless abandon, whereas Kelly Hogan wears Patsy Cline’s sophisticated clarity and class like a new cocktail dress on “Gotta Have My Baby Back” and Brendan Kelly and the Wandering Birds flex working-class muscle in rolling down the wide highway of “Lay Me Down.” It’s a meditation on morality that travels along the same gritty tonal asphalt laid down by The Bottle Rockets, but Robbie Fulks’ previously unreleased “Lonely Ain’t Hardly Living” is where the old timey rubber really meets the road, his strong vocals rising and falling with every pained word in recalling Merle Haggard and George Jones in their prime as mandolin skips playfully around him. This is one compilation that should never visit a record store cutout bin.
—Peter Lindblad
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