In 1967, Bob Dylan swam against the tide to make John Wesley Harding, a country album that perplexed many fans and critics. Country's hokey image and conservative values were anathema to the flower-power generation. Yet Dylan, along with the like-minded Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons, found solace in country's pure sound and the emotional directness of the lyrics.
Like Dylan, many rock musicians have been drawn to country music as a reaction against something. In the '80s, Steve Earle and Jason & The Scorchers traced the line between Merle Haggard and The Ramones as an antidote to Nashville's vapid country-pop acts. By the early '90s alt- country meant The Jayhawks paying homage to Harvest-era Neil Young in the age of grunge, and Uncle Tupelo's Jeff Tweedy, a disillusioned punk drawn to the sound of banjos and pedal steels. Since then, many old prejudices have eroded, as the likes of Calexico, Drive-By Truckers and Neko Case make music under the alt-country banner, merrily joining the dots between indie, hard rock and more with country music in all its forms. Dylan would be proud. Mark Blake
Essential
The Jayhawks
Hollywood Town Hall
Def American, 1992
The Jayhawks came from urban Minneapolis, but their third album could be the soundtrack to a road trip through rural America. With its subtle folk-rock groove, Hollywood... defined the genre in 1992 and has lost none of its charm since then.
Download: Crowded In The Wings
Wilco
Being There
Reprise, 1996
While making Wilco's second LP, Jeff Tweedy was also tackling a drug problem and new fatherhood. The 19 songs on Being There have a punch-drunk quality, with shades of psychedelia, punk and its composer's fuzzy state of mind feeding into the music.
Download: Hotel Arizona
Ryan Adams
Heartbreaker
Bloodshot, 2000
After breaking up Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams stripped his music down to its bare bones for most of his solo debut. Partly inspired by a failed romance, Heartbreaker sounds like one long, glorious sob from the bottom of an empty shot glass.
Download: My Winding Wheel
Recommended
Uncle Tupelo
Anodyne
Sire, 1993
There are still traces of Uncle Tupelo's punk roots on this, their final album, but with its fiddles and pedal steels Anodyne is steeped in the sounds of old Nashville. A brilliant parting shot before co-writers Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar finally fell out for good.
Download: Acuff-Rose
Lucinda Williams
Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
Mercury, 1998
Despite some superstar guests (Emmylou Harris, producer Steve Earle), Lucinda Williams's elegant songwriting and nuanced vocals remain the focus of these songs of heartache, the loneliness of touring and the American South.
Download: 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
Calexico
Feast Of Wire
Quarterstick, 2003
Their native Arizona's sun-bleached landscape casts a shadow over Calexico's music. With its mariachi trumpets, accordions and pedal steel guitars, Feast Of Wire conjures images of rural cantinas, dead bodies in the desert and vultures circling overhead. Download: Quattro (World Drifts In)
For the connoisseur
Drive-By Trucker
Southern Rock Opera
Soul Dump, 2001
This was Drive-By Truckers' open letter to their home state of Alabama. Its 20 songs fused Neil Young-inspired country-rock with lyrics about governor George Wallace and the plane crash that killed two of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Download: The Southern Thing
Neko Case
Middle Cyclone
Anti-, 2009
Running parallel careers as an alt-country singer-songwriter and part of The New Pornographers, Case's last solo album finds a sweet spot between the two worlds. Songs inspired by the power of nature and recorded, appropriately, in a barn in rural Vermont.
Download: Middle Cyclone
11:30 AM | 19/12/2011
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