Review: Steve Austin ‘The Magnolia Sessions’
There has always been a connection between the underground music scene and country music. Often, the darker side of country gets overlooked for the glossy, vapid Nashville pop circuit and whoever passes for artists at the top of whatever chart system is left. However, the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams Snr tapped into darker themes of the occult, folklore, love, and loss in a way that shares common ground with more traditional Shaman fare.
This has carried through to modern artists and been immortalised by acts such as Cave In, Amenra, and Neurosis – with Neurot putting out a series of Townes Van Zandt covers, for example – while The Man In Black himself even returned the compliment by covering Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, amongst others.
One of the latest releases from the critically acclaimed The Magnolia Sessions showcases a more overt collision between these two worlds. Steve Austin, frontman and guitarist of Today Is The Day, was born and raised on a horse farm in Lebanon, Tennessee, with deep family roots in the Appalachian hills of Chestnut Mound. His childhood was soundtracked by the world of country music. Upon picking up the guitar at age ten, he found encouragement from his father Tillman Austin – a honky-tonk musician whose words and melodies would later light the spark for Austin’s return to his first love.
Despite a career spent at the coalface of some of the most abrasive and experimental noise-rock ever produced, The Man Who Loves To Hurt Himself has become a rising force in traditional outlaw country music. As a self-confessed fan of the series, he jumped at the invitation to join Dan Emery at his Anti-Corp compound in Nashville. He grew up listening to Austin’s music, and this represented a connection to his youth. As a result, the two formed a friendship extending beyond the recording, allowing Emery to continue the spirit of his own fandom.
Comprising eight tracks, the opening strains of Am I Just Crazy? swell with cicadas rubbing their wings over the hollow soundbox of their chests before Austin starts picking. The scratches give way to gentle strums as he builds up the song and his voice – deep, nasal and yet resonant all at the same time – intone the searching lyrics about mental health.
As he reaches the hook of the chorus, his voice rises, pleading for answers. Unlike the vicious freakouts of, say, Wheelin’ from Today Is The Day’s 2011 album Pain Is A Warning, he is sombre and introspective, asking questions to an empty fireside, a bottle full of regret, and a handful of troubled dreams.
Without pause, he goes straight into a cover of the legendary Townes Van Zandt song Waiting Round To Die. Recording a Townes track is almost law in rock circles for an artist dabbling in country, and the biting lyrics match the style Austin has often poured out throughout his own career. The upbeat tempo and bravado don’t make the sucker punch – that life is just a petty distraction from the final reckoning – any easier, as Austin delivers it with a devastatingly casual matter-of-factness.
Later, he invokes the spirit of The Delmore Brothers with a crooning version of Blues Stay Away From Me, a slow and wistful number from two stars of The Grand Ole Opry in its 1930s heyday. The steel guitar jangles with the chords but never distracts from Austin as he delivers lines like ‘Time goes by, and still I can’t be free’, like it was something he could well have written himself.
For fans of dark country music and Today Is The Day, this is a must-listen…
Of his own compositions, The Rain Keeps Coming Down speaks of darkness and a fear of tomorrow before breaking into the huge hook of the chorus. Using false stops and big, open strumming, the intimate setting allows you focus on his expressive voice, that Tennessee twang accented by the faint pulse of the cicadas.
Henry tussles with morality, healing, running from demons of the past, and, naturally, the bottle. Like many staples of dark country, there is an undercurrent of self-inflicted pain and self-medication against the horrors of the world. When he sings ‘Empty hearts, empty hands, empty pockets across the land’ on Marked Cards And Loaded Dice, he isn’t raging against the machine, but he is calling out the destruction wreaked by a corrupt system.
I Won’t Make It Last is as tender a lamenting love song as any in the genre, mourning ‘something I can’t have’. Meanwhile Crazy Dreams looks at the hard task of striking out on your own, growing from an adolescent to a man in a low remembrance, that captures that fragile sense of hopefulness that now seems distant.
The almost uncharacteristically playful So Far Gone channels an energy and structure that would sit more easily with Today Is The Day, but the stripped-down setting of just Austin and his isolated guitar somehow gives it a shit-kickin’, sawdust-on-the-saloon-floor feel as the downstrokes are struck with force.
Long Way To Hell has an epic feel, like an old gunslinger looking back on his life and the lives of those around him, now at the end of his time trying to explain why he couldn’t save them from themselves. As the longest track of the session, it serves as a reminder that, as a songwriter, Austin deserves far more recognition than he receives. The wistfully sentimental I Still Sing The Old Songs closes out the recording with an ode to the past – a thankful dissection of country music culture wrapped in a rousing ditty with a feel-good chorus.
The Magnolia Sessions never fail to deliver, and it is no surprise that bringing in Austin after his outlaw country pivot absolutely delivers. For fans of dark country music and Today Is The Day, this is a must-listen.
Label: Anti-Corp Music
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Scribed by: Mark Hunt-Bryden
