As the title track from Dwight Yoakam’s forthcoming album jangles by, you’re reminded, all at once, of the crossover appeal that his cowpunk rebellion held some three decades back.
Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. arrived like a lightning bolt out of the blue in 1986, and not just because it eschewed the synth-driven gloss of the day. If the Band served as fathers of Americana, then Dwight Yoakam surely served as the cool cousin — the one who got it into plenty of adolescent trouble.
There was an attitude about Dwight Yoakam, an endlessly complex figure who had the cool detachment of the great early rockers, the emotional complexity of the next generation that succeeded them and the steel-toed fatalism of every great country star who followed thereafter. Cool clothes, too. And “Second Hand Heart” shows, all over again, that he still does.
On one level, it sounds like the Byrds. On another, Buck Owens. On another still, Gene Vincent. Keep going. At bottom, there’s something unquantifiable, something uniquely Dwight Yoakam — a singer-songwriter who can turn a survivor’s tale with a single hurt yelp. Pulling back these layers is part of the delicious mystery surrounding classic Yoakam moments like this one, as two lovers wrestle over whether they should even start down the road to certain pain.
In the end, it seems like they might — and who can blame them with a warm wind like Dwight Yoakam at their backs? He places a jolting final line in her mouth that could have come from a dog-eared poetry book, it’s so agelessly unique, so powerfully resonant. And then, he’s gone.
‘Second Hand Heart,’ due on April 14, 2015 via Reprise Records, features seven other originals, as well as an upbeat new take on “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Chris Lord-Alge co-produced, with Yoakam. This is his first new album since 2012’s ‘Three Pears,’ the sessions for which produced the earliest inspiration for this title track.
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