The World We Live In
291. James McMurtry "Levelland"
This is pretty much the best song yet about living in George W. Bush's 'Red State' America. James McMurtry is the son of Pulitzer Prize winning author Larry McMurtry and he shares his father's eye for telling detail and compassion for everyday people. And he has the additional blessing of a vocals that sound like the voice of hard-won wisdom and an ear for what well-placed guitar chords can do to bring a message home.
This composition was supposedly written about a friend of McMurtry's who was a Marxist who grew up in a small town in Texas. He pulls no punches about the loneliness such a person suffers ('they never had much use for me...') but he also admits that the pain he feels at his isolation is partly due to the compassion he feels for the people surrounding him ('Listen to the marching band/they're doing the best they can..')
The conflicts in the song are left unresolved, and it's so much the better for that since they're unresolved in the world at large, too, and McMurtry is one of our best chroniclers of our current situation.
This is pretty much the best song yet about living in George W. Bush's 'Red State' America. James McMurtry is the son of Pulitzer Prize winning author Larry McMurtry and he shares his father's eye for telling detail and compassion for everyday people. And he has the additional blessing of a vocals that sound like the voice of hard-won wisdom and an ear for what well-placed guitar chords can do to bring a message home.
This composition was supposedly written about a friend of McMurtry's who was a Marxist who grew up in a small town in Texas. He pulls no punches about the loneliness such a person suffers ('they never had much use for me...') but he also admits that the pain he feels at his isolation is partly due to the compassion he feels for the people surrounding him ('Listen to the marching band/they're doing the best they can..')
The conflicts in the song are left unresolved, and it's so much the better for that since they're unresolved in the world at large, too, and McMurtry is one of our best chroniclers of our current situation.
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