John Mellencamp - Life, Death, Love, And Freedom

 

 

Rip Info

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Artist: John Mellencamp

Album Title: Life, Death, Love, And Freedom

Record Label: Hear Music

Rip Date: 2008-07-12

Catalog Number:

Genre: Pop

Year: 2008

Source: CD

Encoder: LAME 3.97 -V2 --vbr-new

Quality: 163 kbps avg / 44.1KHz / Joint Stereo

 

 

Track List

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01 Longest Days                                   3:10

02 My Sweet Love                                  3:27

03 If I Die Sudden                                3:47

04 Troubled Land                                  3:25

05 Young Without Lovers                           2:51

06 John Cockers                                   3:54

07 Don't Need This Body                           3:27

08 A Ride Back Home                               3:13

09 Without A Shot                                 3:42

10 Jena                                           3:42

11 Mean                                           2:35

12 County Fair                                    3:44

13 For The Children                               4:38

14 A Brand New Song                               3:57

                                                --------

                                                00:49:32

                                                60.85 megs

 

Rip Notes

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As an artist, John Mellencamp has come a long way.  From his earliest days as

Johnny Cougar (the name given him by David Bowie's former manager Tony DeFries),

John Mellencamp has most often been dismissed as an artist who, despite the sort

of common man concerns expressed in songs like "Jack And Diane" and "Hurts So

Good," was just never taken all that seriously.

 

As much as he may have aspired to the loftier songwriting standards of his peers

like Dylan, and especially Springsteen — and as much as those songs may have

resonated with the sort of everyday Joes they were so clearly directed towards —

from a critical point of view, the former Johnny Cougar was a guy who basically

couldn't get himself arrested.

 

Which is something I'm sure really ate away at the "little bastard" way back

then.

 

But when he finally responded, he did so in a big way. With 1985's Scarecrow,

coming as it did on the heels of Springsteen's own big commercial breakthrough

on Born In The U.S.A., Mellencamp served notice to the world that as both an

artist, and as a great songwriter, he was certainly no mere "cornfed

Springsteen," as some of his loudest critics had so long proclaimed.

 

He also put his money where his lyrics on that album about the plight of the

American farmer on that album were, by getting directly involved in Willie

Nelson's Farm-Aid benefit concerts. Mellencamp remains a Farm-Aid board member

to this day.

 

Although with that album he did finally gain some long sought after respect,

Mellencamp's recorded output since Scarecrow has been spotty at best. For every

great, but overlooked record like Human Wheels, there have been just as many

missteps like Dance Naked.

 

Last year's Freedom's Road however, signaled a clear return to both artistic and

commercial form. And even though a song like "Our Country" may deliver mixed

messages through its widely seen use in those truck commercials, there's no

mistaking the message found elsewhere on the album in songs like "Ghost Towns

Along The Highway." That the country is in some deep shit rings loud and clear

in the songs on that album.

 

Like we didn't already know, right?

 

Typical to form, Mellencamp sends mixed messages on Life Death Love & Freedom,

which is due out in stores this upcoming Tuesday on the Hear Music label. For

starters, there's that association with the Starbucks funded label. Not exactly

a way of sticking it to the man for sure.

 

But I'm willing to cut Mellencamp some slack here.

 

In an age where traditional music marketing through the usual channels has

bitten the dust, an artist like Mellencamp who is most often associated with the

classic rock tag has gotta do what he's gotta do to get his songs out there.

Rock radio was corrupted long ago, the labels have all been co-opted by

corporate shareholders, and outside of the precious few independent avenues

remaining, music retail is all but dead.

 

As I said, ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do, even if it means shaking hands with a

new devil.

 

Looking past that, I've also gotta give Mellencamp his due on where he chose to

actually take the new songs found on Life Death Love & Freedom. While last

year's Freedom Road was hardly a runaway hit, it still brought Mellencamp the

most commercial attention he has seen in a very long time (albeit largely due to

those truck ads for the song "Our Country"). It would have been both easy, and

commercially prudent, to follow that up with some radio-friendly hits, which I

am absolutely sure Mellencamp can still pull out of his songwriter's ass on a

moments notice.

 

Instead, on Life Death Love & Freedom, Mellencamp has stripped the songs down to

their barest — and quite frankly, very dark sounding minimum. Although, this

isn't quite Mellencamp's Nebraska, the feel here overall is still very stark,

folkish and bluesy. The characters who populate the songs here are likewise

simple folk in search of something as seemingly universal — yet, nonetheless

hard to find — in their everyday lives as just finding a way out. If there is a

unifying theme here, it is one that is deeply personal, and cuts right to the

bone.

 

Speaking of the songs themselves, lyrically speaking they are populated by

characters searching for redemption anywhere they can find it. Like the guy

"handing out scripture like we wrote it ourselves" on "Without A Shot." So, in

that respect the landscape found on much of this record is a bleak one, but not

one without hope. Most often, the characters here are simply looking for "A Ride

Back Home." On this particular song, in a plea to Jesus, the subject even adds

"I won't you bother you no more."

 

On perhaps the album's most widely publicized in advance song, "Jena,"

Mellencamp doesn't dwell on the specific events of the whole Jena 6 deal, but

rather cuts to the core of racism itself in the line, "Jena, take your nooses

down."

 

Just for the record here, not all of the songs on Life Death Love & Freedom

feature stripped down arrangements, and in fact many of them are performed

full-on by Mellencamp's crack touring band. The current single, "My Sweet Love"

(do those even really exist anymore if you're not somebody like Lil Wayne?) for

example crackles with a rockabilly feel, set to great gospel backing vocals.

Likewise, "Troubled Land" has a nice Dylanesque keyboard riff that punctuates

its message of "judgment day closer all the time."

 

The bottom line is I really like this record. Alot.

 

And T-Bone Burnett has done one hell of a job in stripping Mellencamp's great

new songs down to their barest core in the interest of getting their message —

starkly out there as it often is — across.

 

The deluxe edition is also the first to be recorded using the CODE technology,

which is said to capture the warmth of the original recordings like nothing else

has since digital became the standard.

 

I'm not sure I'm ready just yet to buy into the hype about this being

Mellencamp's best since such and such an album. But Life Death Love & Freedom

is, at the very least, a pretty great sounding record.