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“Cross the mighty Hudson river
To the New York City side
Red head by my side, boys
Sweetest thing I found
Goodbye Guitar Town.”

-Steve Earle - “Tennessee Blues”

I was prepared to live quite happily without Steve Earle’s new album. That’s not because I’m not a fan, quite the contrary - I think Steve Earle is one of the best American singer-songwriters of the last three decades, on a par with Springsteen. In my opinion, “Copperhead Road” beats out any Lynyrd Skynyrd song as the greatest Southern rock anthem. “Transcendental Blues” and “The Mountain” are two of my favorite albums ever and the recordings Earle made with Townes van Zandt and Guy Clark, “Together at the Bluebird Cafe”, may be the best live album ever made.

It’s just that something has happened to Steve Earle since 2000, his politics have overtaken his songwriting. I like a good political song or album and Earle’s music has always had an overt populist undertone much like Dylan’s and Springsteen’s. But after Bush’s election and 9/11 Earle’s music took on a much more “Jerusalem”, Earle’s response to the U.S. response to 9/11 was understandably polemic and still had some good tracks but paled in comparison to other similar records - Springsteen’s “The Rising”, for example. Then in 2004, Earle released “The Revolution Starts Now”, intentionally released before the presidential election, just came off as shrill and immature and was musically very poor.

I saw one review, somewhere that favorably compared Earle’s new record “Washington Square Serenade” to “Transcendental Blues” and I guess I wanted it to be true. That was all it took for me to blow my monthly album allowance on “Washington Street Serenade”. I wish I could remember where I saw that review, so I could give the reviewer a good smack.

“Washington Street Serenade” is, like a lot of Earle’s records, an album with a theme. In this case it’s an ode to New York City. The opener, “Tennessee Blues” gives me hope. It’s a simple rambling country number, a goodbye to Nashville and an fond greeting to the big city. But then things stall, “Down Here Below” sounds a bit too much like “Warrior” from the last record. “Satellite Radio”, “City of Immigrants” carries on with the “Revolution Starts Now” revisit - oversimplified lefty diatribes that are just musically dull. There are a couple of nice love songs, reminiscent of late 90’s Earle - “Sparkle and Shine” and “Come Home to Me”. Then there are songs like “Jericho Road”, “Days Aren’t Long Enough” and “Oxycontin Blues” that sound like pale imitations of early Steve Earle - mid-tempo rockers that fail to get things going. Unfortunately, there are just flat bad songs, annoying tracks that I skip consistently - “Red is the Color” and “Way Down in the Hole”. There are moments of greatness, or one song at least, “Steve’s Hammer” is as good a track that he’s recorded since “Harlan Man”.

I really wanted to like this album and have tried hard to do so, which makes it hurt all the more to pan it completely. The simple truth is that this is not a very good album. It has some moments and he’s drifted away from the political rants a bit. It’s musically pretty good, although the rhythm section struggles to get things going and the whole record seems kind of slip shod and meandering because of this. “Washington Street Serenade” is better than “The Revolution Starts Now”, but it is still disappointing.

Verdict: Where have you gone Steve? Bring back the Hard Core Troubadour! Don’t buy the album. If you’re a fan you’ll be disappointed, if you’re not you’ll wonder what all the fuss is about this Steve Earle. Download “Tennessee Blues” and “Steve’s Hammer”.

I bought “Washington Square Serenade” from iTunes, so can’t post an MP3. However, “Tennessee Blues” is available from the leather canary and “City of Immigrants” from speed of dark.