T-Bone Burnett

T-Bone Burnett finished off 2010 producing two well-received albums for aging rockers: Elvis Costello's sprawling but well-conceived National Ransom and John Mellencamp's surprising No Better Than This, an album that apparently gets so rootsy that its sound way predates the faux roots that Mellencamp was famous for in the 80s. Earlier that year he produced Jakob Dylan's Women and Country, also featuring Neko Case, which I listened to repeatedly after its release. Oh yes, and he won a Grammy for the soundtrack to the Jeff Bridges show that was called Crazy Heart .

No doubt Burnett is famous for the sound he has helped other artists achieve on some of their best albums. His name has become synonymous with a kind of country and folk-rock purity. Considering his most notable production credits, one thinks anything he touches will have a genuine, warm tone, from the Counting Crows' August and Everything After to Gillian Welch's Hell Among the Yearlings. The music Burnett helps create is often sparse, but the tone, even of just one or two acoustic instruments, is rich and inviting. These albums never feel shallow.

But growing up as a big Elvis Costello fan, I have always been uneasy with the tension that, while Burnett is famous for this warm traditional sound, he also produced Costello's Spike in 1989. No song sounds alike on this weird outing, and nothing save for "Tramp The Dirt Down" translates as even remotely traditional. There are reverberated pipes being banged on. Brash trumpets pop. Suddenly a tympani announces itself. Spike is a roller-coaster of eclectic pop songs, and an album I like to revisit from time to time for its sheer sense of adventure. But for all the timelessness in Burnett's sound, this album sounds like it came straight out of the 1980s. Especially that muffled snare drum!

I was expecting something similar from Burnett's 1986 self-titled release when I first saw the cover. Burnett wears a boxy tuxedo and stares off in an odd, stately manner. I was anticipating new wavey confusion and having visions of the big suit from Stop Making Sense. Turns out I was wrong. There's barely even a snare drum to fuck with! Just ten songs played by a bunch of excellent acoustic musicians and singers. Jerry Douglas's dobro work is, as always, extraordinary. (He's no stranger to Burnett, who produced the last two Costello records on which Douglas appears.) And the sound is, as I should have expected, rich with texture. I never thought I'd quote an amazon.com review, but one phrase I read does seem fitting: the songs and the production "shine without showboating". I think that's a pretty good way to sum up how I feel about Burnett's qualities as a producer over the years.



Alright. I've held off writing about how strange T-Bone Burnett looks for this long, but now I can't help it. In that TNN video he looks exactly like the bully from The Karate Kid.