#3 Tragic Songs Of Life by The Louvin Brothers

Well it didn’t take me long at all until the first artist that I had never heard of. Of no real surprise really considering that country/bluegrass has never had that much of a foothold in Britain. For the most part that is a shame as brilliant albums such as Van Lear Rose and Gunpowder & Lead just don’t register on the British radar. Anyway, this is beside the point and in fact a bit redundant with respects to this album in general.

I have always thought that in music there is nothing more unsettling than a cheerful sounding track with a darker message that underpins it. When done well, such as or Madonna’s offering on domestic violence (Till Death Do Us Part), these songs can be a real boon whose rewards are reaped on that ever fateful second listen where you start to listen to the songs ever more closely.

This is what gives Tragic Songs of Life so much strength as on the first listen these are all pleasant country/bluegrass songs that warrant either some form of hoedown or the purchase of hammock, seriously I had a fantasy while listening to Katie Dear that I was in a rocking chair. Then suddenly a word catches your ear and what is revealed is a tragic song about a lover’s committing suicide. For me Katie Dear was actually the song that made me double take and take notice of the lyrics.

This album is in fact littered with songs about everyday tragedies such as heartache (Let Her Go, God Bless Her) to far more macabre turns about someone murdering their lover and depositing their body (Knoxville Girl) and how the death of a mother caused the rest of her family to die of grief (Mary Of The Wild Moor).

Ok, I may have some form of morbid curiosity when it comes to the macabre. That’s kind of a mute point. However, this album not only satisfies this curiosity but also have some element of a shock factor that is still preserved some 50-odd years later. The fact that some of these songs were standards and/or traditional songs just makes it all the more compelling. This is the first album where I expect to listen to it all again in the interim periods between the next 998, depending how far I get.

8.0/10

Fab Four:

Kentucky
Katie Dear
Knoxville Girl
Mary Of The Wild Moor