Twangville

A music blog featuring Alt-Country, Americana, Indie, Rock, Folk & Blues. Est. 2005.

Now & Then: Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Live Forever and the reach of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

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Live Forever is a live album, but it also feels like a check-in from the road, a way of hearing Hurray For The Riff Raff’s songs in a shared space. Alynda Segarra has long written with one foot in folk tradition and the other in a tougher, more restless world, where memory, loss, survival, and movement blur together. That makes Car Wheels on a Gravel Road a useful earlier marker, not because the records sound alike in every respect, but because Lucinda Williams showed how roots music could carry intimate detail, regional texture, and emotional wear without losing its bite.

Now & Then: The Steel Wheels’ The Steel Wheels and the reach of Tomorrow the Green Grass

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Some self-titled albums feel like a debut all over again. Others feel like a band planting a flag after years on the road. The Steel Wheels’ The Steel Wheels lands somewhere in between, sounding like a group confident enough to reintroduce itself without pretending it has become something entirely new. That makes The Jayhawks’ 1995 Tomorrow the Green Grass a useful “Then” match: another record by a roots-minded band that widened its reach without losing its center.

Now & Then: Reese McHenry’s Forever and the reach of Furnace Room Lullaby

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Some records show up as a comeback, some as a coronation. Released posthumously, Forever arrives with a sadder kind of gravity, but it does not feel hushed or fragile from the outside. Even the title has a little swagger. So do the songs gathered under it. McHenry’s work always carried that useful contradiction, where the voice could sound world-weary and ready to laugh at the same time, and where a tune could feel lived-in without ever slumping into the sounds of a polite singer-songwriter. 

Now & Then: Rose’s Pawn Shop’s American Seams and the reach of Southern Rock Opera

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There’s a specific kind of American band that always sounds like it’s been driving all night, even when it’s standing perfectly still. The rhythm section has road dust in its pockets. The harmonies feel like the front porch light got left on. The songs smile at you, but they’re squinting, like they’ve seen how the sausage gets made.

Now & Then: The Band of Heathens’ Country Sides and the reach of Golden Smog’s Down by the Old Mainstream

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Some bands age like cast iron: the scratches add flavor, and somehow the thing gets more useful the longer you keep it around. The Band of Heathens have always played like they were born in a room where somebody left the Wurlitzer on, the amps warm, and the door cracked for whoever has a harmony part.