Cowboy Jamboree Music Review
Matt Moran &
the Palominos:
THE BA'AR
by Adam Van Winkle
You know the scene: Lebowski and the Stranger sit at the bowling alley bar and the Stranger dispenses advice. “Sometimes you eat the ba’ar…sometimes the ba’ar, well, he eats you.” Lebowski asks is this is some kind of eastern wisdom. The Stranger says far from it. Dressed in his best country western garb, Sam Elliot looks nothing like an eastern prophet.
The existential explanation of the saying is of course that humans are not rational creatures, but instead make decisions based on subjective meaning. This is the human condition. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
Matt Moran & the Palominos describe their sound as “existential country.” How fitting then that the latest to drop from the southwestern Oklahoma songwriter and his crew is called The Ba’ar (available September 12th).
I’ll be an honest reviewer here: I try to resist picking up new artists. As someone who listens to hours of country, folk, Americana, and everything in between, every week I find it overwhelming to add to the list. It’s hard for me to be passive about music. A buddy I jam with occasionally once asked me, after some tangent I’d made about Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, “Do you deep dive like every musician you listen to?”
Yea, pretty much.
To think of all the good music I haven’t dived into frankly gives me anxiety. How do I listen to all the new great stuff and still get all the minutes in listening to all them already on my list of favorites? When I do give an artist that’s new-to-me a listen, I usually know within a song if I want to add them to the list or not. Fair? Probably not. But it means if I’m not bowled over right away, it may take me a minute to get back to them.
When I heard the first line of Moran’s last album, Heartache Kid, I knew this was for me. And I knew Moran was on to something different. “One Thing Good One Time” from that record has been one of my most played songs of the last few years. When Moran & the Palominos announced The Ba’ar, I knew it would go on my list without question.
And I’m here to say, from the opening line, it’s a stunner: “Every drink you take, my name crosses your lips.”
The Palominos provide a complex and cool sound that blends some of the best of 90s alternative rock with enough fiddle and twang to be something wholly original in alt-country. And they’re whip sharp players. Credit to Daniel Moran (bass and keys), Jonas Walker (drums), Nate Walker (guitar and banjo) and Jason Harrell (fiddle).
The drink in the album’s opening line isn’t the only rumination on bad habits and addiction here. Moran’s lyrics take brutal, honest looks at addiction in the perfect country package. In “New Old Bad Habits,” he feels the burden of “Bourbon whiskey and cigarettes/a couple of pills I’ll regret.” He wants release from it: “If you want it you can have it/Cuz I don’t think I can take/Any more dead weight than I’m already packing.”
In “House Fire,” Moran takes it to the next level, with overtones of a couple’s dependence on heroin, showing the picture addiction and a co-dependent relationship can paint in some of the best images in country music I’ve heard, ever:
Honey I want to take you
To the places you’ve never been
Like a mattress on the living room floor
Of a one-bedroom apartment
Or the backseat of a Pontiac
On a hot August night
Smoking cigarettes out by the lake
Waiting on the West Texas sunrise
Your love’s just like a house fire
Soot is all that it breeds
Our love’s just like a match
Heats one little sweet…
“Comanchero” keeps this theme up, with the speaker promising to stay ahead of the law, to beg and to steal for his love.
The title track provides an existential outlook on substance abuse: “I’ll have another round/to make it all go down.” The speaker drinks tequila for the good times, and whiskey for the bad. And of course: “Sometimes you eat the ba’ar/Sometimes the ba’ar eats you.” Substances take us way up, they take us way down.
I’m hard pressed to think of a better songwriter for tackling such topics in country music with such philosophical outlook and superb imagery since Townes Van Zandt. Not a light comparison, I know, but it’s absolutely apt.
It ain’t all sorrow here. “Airplanes and Oxygen Masks” offers hope. There Moran sings “There’s a first time for everything/And the last ain’t guaranteed.” He goes on, “I’m tired of being angry/And I’m tired of being sad/And I’m tired of being lonely/And I’m tired of being had.” He thinks of the image of airplanes and oxygen masks: a lifeline. He resolves, “Can’t be no good to nobody/If you ain’t worth a damn/I know that I’m worth a damn.”
This review might be a little lyric heavy, but if you haven’t gotten it by now, I’ll shout it: MATT MORAN IS A BRILLIANT SONGWRITER. After Heartache Kid I knew as much. The Ba’ar picks up the ball and carries it even further. The Ba’ar is a brilliant album.
Matt Moran’s not new-to-me anymore. He’s on the favorites list.
Matt Moran &
the Palominos:
THE BA'AR
by Adam Van Winkle
You know the scene: Lebowski and the Stranger sit at the bowling alley bar and the Stranger dispenses advice. “Sometimes you eat the ba’ar…sometimes the ba’ar, well, he eats you.” Lebowski asks is this is some kind of eastern wisdom. The Stranger says far from it. Dressed in his best country western garb, Sam Elliot looks nothing like an eastern prophet.
The existential explanation of the saying is of course that humans are not rational creatures, but instead make decisions based on subjective meaning. This is the human condition. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
Matt Moran & the Palominos describe their sound as “existential country.” How fitting then that the latest to drop from the southwestern Oklahoma songwriter and his crew is called The Ba’ar (available September 12th).
I’ll be an honest reviewer here: I try to resist picking up new artists. As someone who listens to hours of country, folk, Americana, and everything in between, every week I find it overwhelming to add to the list. It’s hard for me to be passive about music. A buddy I jam with occasionally once asked me, after some tangent I’d made about Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, “Do you deep dive like every musician you listen to?”
Yea, pretty much.
To think of all the good music I haven’t dived into frankly gives me anxiety. How do I listen to all the new great stuff and still get all the minutes in listening to all them already on my list of favorites? When I do give an artist that’s new-to-me a listen, I usually know within a song if I want to add them to the list or not. Fair? Probably not. But it means if I’m not bowled over right away, it may take me a minute to get back to them.
When I heard the first line of Moran’s last album, Heartache Kid, I knew this was for me. And I knew Moran was on to something different. “One Thing Good One Time” from that record has been one of my most played songs of the last few years. When Moran & the Palominos announced The Ba’ar, I knew it would go on my list without question.
And I’m here to say, from the opening line, it’s a stunner: “Every drink you take, my name crosses your lips.”
The Palominos provide a complex and cool sound that blends some of the best of 90s alternative rock with enough fiddle and twang to be something wholly original in alt-country. And they’re whip sharp players. Credit to Daniel Moran (bass and keys), Jonas Walker (drums), Nate Walker (guitar and banjo) and Jason Harrell (fiddle).
The drink in the album’s opening line isn’t the only rumination on bad habits and addiction here. Moran’s lyrics take brutal, honest looks at addiction in the perfect country package. In “New Old Bad Habits,” he feels the burden of “Bourbon whiskey and cigarettes/a couple of pills I’ll regret.” He wants release from it: “If you want it you can have it/Cuz I don’t think I can take/Any more dead weight than I’m already packing.”
In “House Fire,” Moran takes it to the next level, with overtones of a couple’s dependence on heroin, showing the picture addiction and a co-dependent relationship can paint in some of the best images in country music I’ve heard, ever:
Honey I want to take you
To the places you’ve never been
Like a mattress on the living room floor
Of a one-bedroom apartment
Or the backseat of a Pontiac
On a hot August night
Smoking cigarettes out by the lake
Waiting on the West Texas sunrise
Your love’s just like a house fire
Soot is all that it breeds
Our love’s just like a match
Heats one little sweet…
“Comanchero” keeps this theme up, with the speaker promising to stay ahead of the law, to beg and to steal for his love.
The title track provides an existential outlook on substance abuse: “I’ll have another round/to make it all go down.” The speaker drinks tequila for the good times, and whiskey for the bad. And of course: “Sometimes you eat the ba’ar/Sometimes the ba’ar eats you.” Substances take us way up, they take us way down.
I’m hard pressed to think of a better songwriter for tackling such topics in country music with such philosophical outlook and superb imagery since Townes Van Zandt. Not a light comparison, I know, but it’s absolutely apt.
It ain’t all sorrow here. “Airplanes and Oxygen Masks” offers hope. There Moran sings “There’s a first time for everything/And the last ain’t guaranteed.” He goes on, “I’m tired of being angry/And I’m tired of being sad/And I’m tired of being lonely/And I’m tired of being had.” He thinks of the image of airplanes and oxygen masks: a lifeline. He resolves, “Can’t be no good to nobody/If you ain’t worth a damn/I know that I’m worth a damn.”
This review might be a little lyric heavy, but if you haven’t gotten it by now, I’ll shout it: MATT MORAN IS A BRILLIANT SONGWRITER. After Heartache Kid I knew as much. The Ba’ar picks up the ball and carries it even further. The Ba’ar is a brilliant album.
Matt Moran’s not new-to-me anymore. He’s on the favorites list.
