Steve Earle
Jerusalem
Artemis Records
By Kevin Minihan
 After
all the media feeding frenzy controversy surrounding the new
Steve Earle release, Jerusalem, I wasn't sure what to
expect. Was it going to be anti-American? Was it going to be
preachy? I vowed to simply keep an open mind as I pressed play.
I admit I was disoriented when the first few seconds of the
opening track "Ashes to Ashes" began with Earle whispering
to a synth-dance beat. But just as bewilderment set in, the
twang of a guitar and the solid pounding of the drums smashed
through announcing vintage Steve Earle.
As Earle himself has said many a time, he has a political
agenda and he is not going to apologize for it. And with this
album he gives us his unflinching (and uncomfortable to some)
view on the current state of affairs in America. Many of the
songs rant against the bureaucracies and institutions we live
with. In the weighty "Amerika V6.0," Earle laments
the current miserable state of health care, a hot-button election
issue for many in our country.
Look around
There's doctors down on Wall Street sharpenin' their scalpels
and tryin' to cut a deal
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, we got accountants playin' God
and countin' out the pills
Yeah, I know, that sucks that your HMO ain't doin' what you thought
it would do
But everybody's gotta die sometime and we can't save everybody,
that's the best we can do
Among the political criticisms, there are some more standard
Earle tunes. "The Kind," which paints beautiful images
of dreamers and cowboys, seems to be Earle attempting to escape
the craziness of today's world by falling back into warm and
fuzzy images of simpler times and ideas. Understated acoustic
guitar and faint organ blend perfectly, supported by great harmony
vocals. "What's a Simple Man to Do?" is an up tempo
rambler about a desperate and remorseful man who falls into the
Mexican drug trade in after losing his job at the maquiladora
(a Mexican border factory).
All I wanted was a little money
All I needed was a week or two
I never even saw the police comin'
What's a simple man to do?
The song at the heart of the recent Earle controversy whirlwind
was "John Walker's Blues," which many loud voices claimed
was anti-American or at least unpatriotic. I suspect those people
never even listened to the song or read the complete lyric. Looking
through John Walker's eyes, Earle attempts to show how a teenager
could feel so alienated by the current plasticized American pop
culture to become desperate enough to latch on to something that
they feel speaks to him, especially to his spiritual vacuum.
Close attention to the lyrics shows that the song is not about
praising what Walker did, nor does Earle condone what happened;
he just looks underneath the screaming "Johnny Taliban"
banner headlines and catchall phrases for some more rational
explanation of Walker's behavior and motivation. What makes
Earle a genius songwriter is that he can take such an explosive,
politically charged topic and extrapolate it into something beyond
Muslim = bad, American = good. It takes a complex man to untie
the knot of complex emotional issues. Steve Earle is that complex
man.
The great payoff at the end of the album is the title cut,
"Jerusalem." Twelve string guitars jangle and Earle's
harmonica moans about the violence in the Middle East. Earle
doesn't try to solve the region's problems; he just asks why
things are this way and prays that one day things will change
for the better. It is a song of hope and spirit with a melody
that we just can't help but hum along with and a dream that we
all want to see come true. Earle stresses the commonalities between
the Muslim and Christian faiths rather than the differences.
And there'll be no barricades then
There'll be no wire or walls
And we can wash all this blood from our hands
And all this hatred from our souls
And I believe that on that day all the Children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem
Although some listeners may not like Earle's stances on certain
issues, in my view this album is not anti-American at all. It's
certainly not radical enough to start a 'jihad' against Mr. Earle,
as certain talking heads have suggested. Many of the tunes are
protest songs, but what is more American than a protest song?
Free speech is what makes this country great. Listeners can
decide for themselves whether they agree with Earle's commentary
on the state of the Union, but it will be difficult to deny that
this is one great record with Earle as angst ridden, pissed off,
and twangy as ever. I hope he stays that way for a long time.
While many artists have taken the short cut of appealing to
our base emotions of fear and revenge (see the 'wildly' popular
9/11 offerings from Toby Keith, Charlie Daniels, etc.) Earle
seeks to learn from our mistakes and tragedies by, as he says
in his liner notes, "asking the hardest questions in our
darkest hours." He is a different type of patriot, but
a patriot all the same.
www.steveearle.com
www.artemisrecords.com
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