Not Cool•Tim Easton•Campfire Propaganda•Producers: Brad Jones, Robin Eaton•Score:8 of 10
Nashville-based Tim Easton’s tenth album, Not Cool, could have been made by a hulking musical amalgam of 1950s Sun Records stars and Music City street buskers that splits his time between Beale Street and Broadway in Nashville. High-strung, blasting rockers tinged with bawdy honkytonk heat fall in with throwback rock ‘n’ roll, murky classic blues and the mountain folk tribute “Knock Out Roses,” written the day Levon Helm died. Over a piano shedding tears, Easton sings with a slight rasp that sounds cobwebbed by vices on the title track, the album’s penultimate jewel that resonates lyrically and literally as if sung to a vast, empty barroom in the style of Ryan Adams’ own bleeding heart waltzes. – Jessica Pace
