Send "Steve Earle " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Empathy is Steve Earle's calling card. Many of the best songs Earle's written find him telling the story of some real or imagined person who has either endured an injustice or been widely demonized or misunderstood. A badass with a bleeding heart, Earle has lent compassion to criminals ("Billy Austin", "Tom Ames' Prayer", "John Walker's Blues") as well as given voice to the kinds of disenfranchised people who rarely have one ("Good Ol Boy (Gettin' Tough)", "Taneytown", "Home From Houston"). Almost all of these are protest songs to some degree, yet by putting a face to an issue and getting you to sympathize with his subject's plight, it never feels like Earle is preaching.The clear highlight of Earle's 14th studio album, I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, is "The Gulf of Mexico", and it fits this mold flawlessly. As you've probably guessed from the title, the underlying issue is the Gulf oil spill, but instead of soapboxing about corporate irresponsibility, Earle illuminates the history of the region by sketching the lives of three generations of men who worked its waters. We meet the narrator's grandfather running a shrimp boat, the father ferrying workers to and from the mighty oil rigs, and then finally the storyteller himself, working on the drilling floor and witness to the catastrophic explosion that "spilled the guts of hell out on the gulf of Mexico." As the three verses progress, the water turns from blue to green to red. Earle seems to feed off this sense of righteous purpose-- on this album, see also "Little Emperor", a giddy skewering of American hubris. When his subject matter is more nebulous, stylized, or even personally intimate, his songwriting tends to falter. "Molly-O", "Meet Me in the Alleyway", and "The Wanderer" lean too heavily on tropes of the outlaw, the gritty urban denizen and the vagabond, respectively, while trading on the listener's recognition that Earle himself has been categorized in those roles. Conversely, the gentle sentiments of "God Is God" and "Every Part of Me" are deeply felt but hardly profound. It doesn't help that Earle isn't a particularly strong melodist, and rarely will surprise you musically-- here, only "Lonely Are the Free", delicately decorated with acoustic guitar fills, truly measures up to his top-line lyricism. His most effortless mode is charging, attitudinal roots-rock, but only the opening "Waitin' on the Sky" really hits that strutting sweet spot....full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| Steve Earle has never been one to pull his punches. In both his spectacularly troubled personal life and his rough and tumble songs, subtlety has never been the name of the game. Nothing’s changed this time around, and the release of I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive with songs like “Little Emperor” — Earle’s final kiss-off to the Bush era — and the Woody Guthrie-inspired “Gulf of Mexico” show that recent successes evidenced by Grammy and Emmy awards, a celebrated acting career and a soon-to-be-released novel have done nothing to dull his wicked edge. For longtime fans, that can only be a good thing. I’ll Never Get Out Of this World Alive is Steve Earle’s 14th studio album and his first collection of original material to be released since Washington Square Serenade won the Grammy in 2008 for Best Folk/Americana Album. Townes, Earle’s tribute to his mentor, the legendary songwriter Townes Van Zandt, went on to win a Grammy the following year in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to infer that the singer felt no small amount of pressure when he went into the studio to record a follow-up....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| Between acting (The Wire), fiction writing (his novel arrives in May) and psychedelic calls to arms ("The Revolution Starts Now"), 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. Yet he's still your lefty BFF on "Little Emperor," a bluegrass kiss-off to George W. Bush that recalls a time when blame was easier to assign....full text |
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