I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

by Steve Earle

Overview

1/2 It's easy to forget that Steve Earle is a country singer. He reminds you here. Produced by T Bone Burnett, this may be the shaggy outlaw's most polished set: Check the movingly animist "God Is God," the stately Cajun "Waitin' on the Sky" and Earle's own singing, which transcends his usual blasted croak.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/26/2011
Label:	New West Records
UPC:	0607396619528
catalogNumber:	6195
Rank:	30963

Tracks

1. Waitin' On the Sky
2. Little Emperor
3. The Gulf of Mexico
4. Molly-O
5. God is God
6. Meet Me In the Alleyway
7. Every Part of Me
8. Lonely Are the Free
9. Heaven or Hell
10. I Am a Wanderer
11. This City

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Steve Earle   Primary Artist,Acoustic Guitar,Banjo,Bouzouki,Harmonica,Mandolin,Vocals
T Bone Burnett   Electric Guitar,Vocals
Dennis Crouch   Acoustic Bass
Roland Guerin   Acoustic Bass
Greg Leisz   Pedal Steel Guitar
Allen Toussaint   Conductor
Jay Bellerose   Drums
Allison Moorer   Vocals
Sara Watkins   Fiddle,Vocals
Sammie Williams   Trombone
Jackson Smith   Electric Guitar
Tim Robbins   Vocals
Michael Brown   Euphonium
Keefus Ciancia   Mellotron
Tracey Griffin   Flugelhorn
Jonathan Gross   Tuba

Technical Credits

Steve Earle   Composer
T Bone Burnett   Producer
Allen Toussaint   Horn Arrangements
Mike Piersante   Engineer
Paul Ackling   Guitar Techician
Tony Fitzpatrick   Cover Art
Brady Brock   Publicity
Jason Wormer   Engineer
Amanda Hale-Ornelas   Publicity

Editorial Reviews

Earle is back to relying on his own pen in one of his strongest collections of songs, full of sharply etched observations on mortality, faith, the dirty side of politics, lust and murder, superstition and hard-won love.

Los Angeles Times - Randy Lewis

As a songwriter, Steve Earle is blessed with two apparently contradictory gifts: the ability to animate fictional lives, and a streak of cussed, lefty sincerity that gives bite to his truth-telling.

The Independent (U. K.) - Andy Gill

I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive bears Burnett's familiar production stamp: It's spare and aired-out enough to give the words and sounds ample room to breathe. Fortunately, as with so many of the projects Burnett chooses, the songs...are sturdy enough to bear the scrutiny that follows.

National Public Radio - Stephen Thompson

According to Steve Earle's liner notes for I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, these 11 songs are all "about mortality in one way or another." Certainly the title -- after a song by Hank Williams (also the title of Earle's new novel) -- reflects this, but these songs bear that out in spades. Two of them, "God Is God" and "I Am a Wanderer," were written for Joan Baez and appeared on her Day After Tomorrow album. Earle's versions are less stylized, more worldweary, ragged, and poignant. The former is a sobering anthem which states plainly that human beings -- beginning with the individual -- are not the center of the universe; and strikes at the heart of the conservative notion of "American exceptionalism: "I believe in God, and God ain't us." The latter track is a plaintive country song whose protagonists are day laborers, the homeless, death row inmates, and society's castoffs. The shuffling rockabilly in "Waitin' on the Sky," with producer T-Bone Burnett's and Jackson Smith's (Patti's son) layered electric guitars, Jay Bellerose's taut snare, and Sara Watkins' fiddle, highlight the genuine irony in Earle's words. The hillbilly blues inform "Hey Little Emperor," and the lyrics disguise in pointed humor a deeper anger. "Molly-O" is an old-school murder ballad that offers evidence of a larger darkness than the crime. "The Gulf of Mexico" begins with Earle singing a cappella and becomes an uptempo, lonesome Celtic ballad texturally adorned by Greg Leisz's pedal steel. A song of workers and travelers who quest for basic sustenance, it describes the cost of doing so. Allison Moorer sings with Earle on the bluesy, broken love song "Heaven or Hell"; its martial drumbeat outlines the deathly seriousness in the narrative. "Meet Me in the Alleyway" is a an electric, streetwise, cut-time shuffle à la Tom Waits, with spooky guitar interplay between Smith and Burnett. The folk song "Lonely Are the Free" could have been the album's subtitle as mortality haunts its every phrase. The set closes with "This City," written for and performed in the HBO series Treme; it's just as powerful without cinematic images, thanks to the lyric and Allen Toussaint's forlorn, soulful horn arrangement. I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive's lone downer is Burnett's unnecessarily heavy-handed production. That said, Earle's vocals front and center in a brilliant song cycle transcend it.

All Music Guide - Thom Jurek

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