Steve Earle
The Revolution Starts...Now
(Artemis)
\John Walker's Blues"" was just a whisper compared to the shout that followed. In 2002, Steve Earle drew fire for that track on the 2002 album Jerusalem. The song offered a sympathetic portrayal of the American Taliban fighter captured during the conflict in Afghanistan and made him a martyr of dissent. Jerusalem revealed the anger of Earle and demonstrated how he had gotten above his Transcendental Blues of 2000. Earle's latest offering, The Revolution Starts...Now, fills in the holes that Jerusalem was full of, plugging its shortcomings with thicker description and resilience that's rendered a little more angrily. Where Jerusalem was a reaction to the aftermath of Sept. 11, Revolution is a response to the war in Iraq and a widening income gap. The first of this pair has been superseded by the recent album, but has enough similarities to make them appear like they're one call to arms that has gotten louder over two years.
""The Revolution Starts...,"" the first track of The Revolution Starts...Now begins like Jerusalem did-with a heavy, droning guitar riff that immediately distances Earle from his Guitar Town country days. There's even a bit of Tom Petty's sound in there, and a healthy dose of his The Last DJ ideals. For most of the song, it sounds like it could morph into Jerusalem's second submission, ""Amerika V 6.0 (The Best We Can Do)."" Both are calls to action, freely mixing hope with fury. ""Revolution"" drops the metaphor and cuts to the solution-getting up and getting out to getsomething done.
Here is a political album that doesn't flinch from that moniker. Earle is taking every opportunity to pick apart the current administration and seems to be enjoying it. He's already been condemned as a traitor two years ago and is back to dispute that with liner notes that praise democracy and songs that honor the people who end up fighting for it.""Rich Man's War,"" is his first character song of the album and features Jimmy and Bobby, two working-class men who join the armed forces to have enough money to get by. Earle's sympathy is with his characters' plights, and the song shows the full strength of the album. It is a greater statement than Jerusalem in that it is worded a little more strongly. Lyrically and musically, Earle has come a long way in the interim.
The rest of the album is scattered across genres and Earle seems to have learned a thing or two about each since Jerusalem. ""F the CC,"" the descendant of ""What's a Simple Man to Do?"" brings on the raw, raucous energy of punk. It rolls along on the fewest chords possible and gives the middle finger to every institution Earle cares to point it at.
In a recent Onion interview he said he would make ""a whole record of chick songs"" in a perfect world. In the soft rock song ""I Thought You Should Know,"" Earle is doing what he wants to do: crying over lost loves instead of a lost nation. But Earle is the sort of artist who does what he feels he must, not what he would like to.
