Top Ten Albums for ’95
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Sally Timms, To the Land of Milk and Honey. Mekons singer Timms freely notes that she lacks the sexual angst of a PJ Harvey; her second solo record, made in Chicago with Dave Trumfio and Jon Langford, captures the improbably distinguished voice of a self-described riot granny who’s watched punk evolve for 20 years and uses this perspective to imbue her songs and a wild selection of covers with depth and substance.
Jayhawks, Tomorrow the Green Grass. The Jayhawks bet the farm on this, their fourth album, and lost. The band–minor stars in Chicago, as their steam bath of a show in a packed Vic this summer attested–can’t get arrested in the rest of America, and broke up late last year. But they left this engaging record, which found gorgeousness in all sorts of places–a cover of a Grand Funk tune, a tribute to Victoria Williams, and a song about feelin’ bad called “Blue.”
Steve Earle, Train a Comin’. Speaking of death’s door, that’s something that former junkie and jailbird Steve Earle has knocked on as well. Sadder and wiser, he offered a redemptive acoustic album this year, full of antique songs and settings and marred only by a pair of inappropriate covers–the Beatles’ “I’m Looking Through You” and the reggae classic “Rivers of Babylon.”
Tammy Rogers & Don Heffington, In the Red
. Richard Buckner, Bloomed
