GRANT LANGSTON'S latest album ‘Working Until I Die’ is the sort of album that is immediately likeable. It was funded primarily by fans who liked Grant’s previous work (this is his sixth album), and who pre-bought this one, which paid for all the studio costs and production. The way the industry's going more and more these days.
The album has twelve tracks all of which fall within the country music/Americana genre. What I especially liked about it was the vein of humour that runs throughout. Like any typical country album, there are songs about drink, women, drink, poverty, drink, work and drink. Pretty much in that order.
The opening track ‘I Fall For It Every Time’ is a real blast of country rock which hits the listener like an express train. The lyrics to this one involve women and...drink: “I been nursin’ my heartache, since you put a heel through my chest/ I take a bottle at bedtime, oh, D.D. does the rest.”
This is an infectious tune that will have most people singing along after a couple of plays.
The title track ‘Working Until I Die’ is a tour de force, a guitar and mandolin driven tune, along with some nice fiddle playing and a vocal line that will strike a note with anyone hit by the global recession: - “Can’t save a nickel, can’t save a dime, bill collectors comin’ all the time/ I tell them all, and it’s no lie/ That I’ll be workin’ until I die.”
Again, this is a great track, but when it comes to a bit of lyrical genius, very little on this album can surpass the majestic ‘Everyone Loves Me When I’m Drunk’, a country rock song with a nice line in humour, and hung-over remorse: - “We’re gonna drink the last bottle of wine, all the makers, tequila and lime/ Then we’ll toast to my karaoke, raisin’ their glasses to dust and the wind...And it’s OK if you don’t love me. Everyone loves me when I’m drunk”. But for each night of pleasure there has to be some kind of payback: - “I just woke up, fat lip and hurtin’ some ladies name scratched on my arm/ I can barely remember, she felt like an angel/ The egg-nog and champagne have lost all their charm”. Yes, I remember that feeling well!
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‘A Little Less Fun’ again shows that with age sometimes things aren’t the same any more, although “I still like a cocktail, I take my liquor hard. Drinkin’ fourteen beers and sleepin’ in the yard."
Despite its title, 'Working Until I Die' is a riot of fun, and with only marginally less drinking songs on it than a Pogues album, this should be compulsory listening on a Saturday night!
Grant Langston online
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