Search - Pine Valley Cosmonauts :: The Executioner's Last Songs

Among the best releases of 2002

12/06/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"An outstanding collection -- every bit as great as their Bob Wills tribute CD. Each song is good, but Chris Ligon's "The Great State of Texas" is worth the price of the disc alone."

So mediocre, it's criminal.

M. Nichols | West Chester, OH United States | 01/15/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Jon Langford's latest outing with the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, The Executioner's Last Songs, had large, large shoes to fill. Indeed, the previous releases by the band, '94's Misery Loves Company and '98's ...Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills were two of the finest records released by the top-notch insurgent country label, Bloodshot Records. Where Misery Loves Company was a basic, albeit very accomplished, band affair, ...Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills had the Cosmonauts serving as the house band for some of the genre's brightest stars and though serving double-duty as a tribute record and sampler for Bloodshot's artists, it still succeeded to the point of being one of the finest releases ever from the label and of 1998, for that matter.Why, then, is The Executioner's Last Songs so disappointingly blah? It serves again as a fine sampler of talent, Bloodshot and otherwise, with artists such as Steve Earle, Neko Case, Edith Frost, Johnny Dowd, and, of course, Jon Langford and Company represented in top form and it presents some wonderful interpretations of songs of murder, mob-law & cruel, cruel punishment, highlights including Rosie Flores on "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive," Janet Bean on "The Snakes Crawl at Night," Edith Frost on "Sing Me Back Home" and Diane Izzo's great cover of the otherwise uncoverable Ralph Stanley classic, "Oh Death." Still, despite the vast array of great songs performed by incredible artists, The Executioner's Last Songs still comes across as a disjointed hodge podge. The difference, then, seems to lie in the glue that holds the songs together (or doesn't, in this case). On Misery Loves Company and ...Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills, the Cosmonauts were working with songs from single sources (Misery... covering the songs of Johnny Cash). Even Beneath the Country Underdog, on which the band backed Kelly Hogan, was a greater success, again due to the singular source material. The Executioner's Last Songs, while in theory an incredible thematic idea, just comes across as disjointed due to the widely differing styles demanded by the variety of songs and vocalists. The record, then, is all over the place and while none of the directions it takes are particularly bad, it certainly doesn't make for a very satisfying listen, especially compared with the admittedly incomparable track record set by this band. Subtitled Vol. 1, though, we can probably expect Vol. 2 to follow sometime soon. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's going to take something like a Lefty Frizzell tribute to get this listener excited about the Pine Valley Cosmonauts again."