Charley Crockett – Age Of The Ram (Island) (13th Floor Album Review)
In the last of the generous 20 tracks on this 45 minute album Age of the Ram, Charley Crockett sings in a voice of honeyed whisky: I’m trying to paint you a picture/ But there’s been quite a mixture of honesty and fiction.
Indeed, honesty and fiction pervade what feels like a sonic motion picture, especially given the opening scene (oh, I mean track). In this, a voice announces, in old cinematic style, And now for our feature presentation…followed by the clatter of an antique projector and Crockett’s drawling voice offering the theme: The Life and Times of Billy McLane.
The album narrates episodes in the life of a fictional outlaw Billy McLane who’s involved in gunfights, cattle rustling and wide-open spaces. Numerous states are traversed: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky. It’s the third and last album released within 12 months in a project Crockett calls the Sagebrush Trilogy. The fictional Billy McLane rides through all three albums.
Crockett’s attention to storytelling and varied musical styles seems a step beyond the contemporary crowded market of country performers. Key influences can be discerned: Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Freddy Fender and John Wesley Hardng-era Bob Dylan. Country with outlaw spirit with a bit of TexMex for added flavour. Melancholic and set in a musicality not always found in the genre.
Crockett’s doubtlessly been buoyed along by the upswing in country music, a phenomenon evident here in Aotearoa. Why might a genre so anchored in the landscapes of another land suddenly have a rise in popularity here? In explanation, Mark Rogers of RNZ’s Nashville Babylon remarked that in the genre The songs have no fat on them, they cut to the chase straight away, they are pretty simple.
Pretty simple can be accessible and easy to relate to. A reaction, perhaps, to the over-produced sound of mainstream pop and the often-obscure lyrics of its oppositional genre of Indie. Most country is pretty straightforward. From the distance of Aotearoa, however, much of it can sound like a pile-up of cliches: pick-up trucks, whisky, heartbreak, dirt roads, trad wives. And often with a dose of MAGA between the lines.
Crockett love of an outlaw sensibility has seen him stand apart – lambasting Trump and Musk, stepping outside the usual politics of country. He’s within the genre but sidesteps the cliches by creating a fictional character and letting his lyrics lurch across time zones, past into present.
Tracks are titled as if parts of a movie. Rancho’s Delux is identified as Main Theme, highlighting the soundtrack quality to this set of songs that relies on the reel in the imagination.
Style varies as scenes change; My Last Drink of Wine is a jaunty number full of Western wisdom: all of us here were born to die, watching the world go by.
Everything moves along apace. All songs are under 4 minutes.
There’s a busy rhythm in Fastest Gun Alive and more outlaw philosophy. Never been to heaven but I’ve had one foot in hell.
Diamond Belle has a stripped back, slightly ominous tone. We’re in Missouri this time. Lawman, come and get me, lawman I’m ready.
I Shot Jesse James feels like well-trodden terrain. I was taken back to 1976 and Elton John/ Bernie Taupin’s I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford). Kate Bush, Cher, Nick Cave and Christy Moore all have Jesse James songs too. Not sure we needed another.
And are twenty tracks too many? Perhaps. Mind you The Life and Times of Billy McLane is only 26 seconds!
Crazy Woman Ridge takes us to Santa Fe with a story told over jaunty guitar picking and twang and in Ain’t Got No Time For Useless Conversation Crockett’s themes of rustlers, changing names, running from the law and the sounds of horse hooves continue.
Sweet Mother Texas has a barroom singalong feel and Kentucky Too Long a swampy rhythm. Its mention of Vietnam deftly slides the song-cycle out of the gun-toting past to a different fall-out from bearing arms.
This is the prolific Crockett’s sixteenth album and it ends with the sound of gunshots and the whinnying of a horse. Evocative lyrics and engaging cinematic musicianship. A name I’d love to see ride into town for a concert here on the crest of country music’s wave of popularity,
And what does the Age of the Ram actually mean? I’m none the wiser but I like it that way – there’s a welcome aura of mystique in this man’s country.
Robin Kearns
Age Of The Ram is out now via Island Records
