CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR CARY HUDSON
"There is genuite grit and dirt here, seperating him from the vacancy and sentimentality of his Americana counterparts." Mojo Magazine
"Enormously influential on the burgeoning mid-90's alt-country genre. Cary Hudson proved himself to be as multi-faceted as Neil Young" American Songwriter
No Depression Review for Bittersweet Blues:
If Cary Hudson’s electrified 2004 release Cool Breeze recalled one aspect of Mississippi — the amped-up blues-rock of the North Mississippi All-Stars, minus the sprawling jams — the pared-down acoustic ruminations of Bittersweet Blues bring to mind the Mississippi of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. There’s a writerly, descriptive feel to the former Blue Mountain leader’s latest album, with twelve finely detailed slices of life in the south.
The opening “Snow In Mississippi” sets the tone right away, a back-pages musing on wasted youth going by too fast, “like a rock ‘n’ roll song, like snow in Mississippi.” If you grew up anyplace where snow seldom falls, this perfectly captures the fondly remembered exuberance of a rare snow day off from school.
Hudson is in fine voice throughout, and finer guitar. “Berlin Blues” and the cover of Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train” both pick the Piedmont blues. “Sleeping Under The Stars” echoes the acoustic chime of Big Star’s “Thirteen”. The gliding guitar ripple of “Passing By” makes it perhaps the gentlest road song you’ll ever hear.
But it’s Hudson’s words that stick, whether he’s telling the Elvis legend in the style of an epic seafaring song (”Epitaph”) or detailing the simple pleasures of life off the beaten path (”Song In C”). He brings it all back home on the last song, “Love Can Find A Way”, which confronts the horrors of Hurricane Katrina and suicide bombers in Iraq and posits love as the answer. On paper, that seems hopelessly naive. In song, he makes you believe it.
Harp Magazine Review for Bittersweet Blues:
After 15 years of successfully blending the alternative with the country in the Hilltops (with Wilco’sJohn Stirratt) and then Blue Mountain (with now ex-wife Laurie Stirratt, sister of John), Cary Hudson chose the solo route in 2002. On both that year’s The Phoenix and 2004’s Cool Breeze, Hudson continued to explore the fierce intersection of rock and country, particularly on the latter, which featured some of Hudson’s most grittfy visceral songs to date. For his third outing, Bittersweet Blues, Hudson strips away his electric rock trappings to reveal the throbbing country blues heart underneath. After the maudlin and slightly too literal global warming treatise of “Snow in Mississippi,” Hudson settles into a warm, acoustic groove woven deep into the fabric of his down-home storytelling skills, from the shuffling anti-commercialism Jab of “Just Stuff” to the loping country Joy of “Sleeping Under the Stars,” both featuring post-Katrina subtexts. Hudson proves unplugged doesn’t mean disconnected. BRIAN RAKES
No Depression Review for Cool Breeze:
Call it Exile From Blue Mountain, with an emphasis on the blues. Since the dissolution of both his marriage and the highly-regarded band he shared with his former wife, Laurie Stirratt, Cary Hudson has tapped even deeper into the musical wellspring of his native Mississippi. With his second solo release, he draws inspiration from the likes of John Hurt (on the playful sensuality of this album’s title track) and Fred McDowell (the slicing slide guitar of “Haunted House Blues”) on a collection that barely acknowledges the country side of alt-country.
It’s an album of raging passions, open wounds and bittersweet reflections. Like John Doe after X and Richard Thompson after Linda, Hudson plays with a reckless intensity, careening his way through the album-opening “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” with scant regard for control or craft. There’s a primal power within the stripped-down urgency of the arrangements, from the squall of howling harmonica and slide guitar on “Jellyroll” to the hoedown romp through “Free State Of Jones”.
Where the song cycle opens with a rush of upheaval, the closing “Some Things Never Change” could be heard as older-but-wiser affirmation — either a return full-circle or a fresh renewal. The thematic progression shows Hudson’s reflective side — the morning after the long night’s rock ‘n’ roll binge. “8 Bar Blues” finds its metaphor for a music career, if not the human condition, in the vagaries of a pool hall, while “Don’t Hasten Away” could pass as one of Richard Thompson’s traditional British ballads, with the album’s linchpin lyric: “Nothing good can last for long, unless it lives on in a song.”
REVIEWS
Cary Hudson: Sleeping Under the Stars
