The Criminal Under My Own Hat

T Bone Burnett Texas native T Bone Burnett is celebrated for his production efforts on the behalf of Gillian Welch, Counting Crows, and Elvis Costello. His solo albums released in the '80s and early '90s on Warner Brothers and Columbia didn't sell, but they generated a fair share of mostly posi...	The True False Identity T-Bone Burnett has been hard at it since his last record of original songs in 1992: nominated for a songwriting Oscar, winning a production Grammy, composing movie soundtracks, and serving as one of his trade's most valuable studio musicians. But with those most fascinated by his...	Twenty Twenty - The Essential T Bone Burnett Nobody writes better about surface and depth, illusion and essence, through parable and paradox, than T Bone Burnett. Though he's had more influence as a producer and catalyst (from his days with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review to his visionary masterminding of the O Brother, ...	Raising Sand Perhaps only the fantasy duo of King Kong and Bambi could be a more bizarre pairing than Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Yet on Raising Sand, their haunting and brilliant collaboration, the Led Zeppelin screamer and Nashville's most hypnotic song whisperer seem made for each othe...	Tooth of Crime You re my friend, but I m going to kill you. Don t fret. T Bone Burnett hasn t gone off the deep end. At least not in that way. He s merely explaining the tone of the putyou-on-your-heels opening track of his gripping new album, Tooth of Crime. At once seductive and unsettling fr...
The True False Identity T Bone Burnett likes to keep his listeners off balance, as his first album of new material in 14 years attests. As a producer, Burnett has been responsible for the commercial breakthrough of emerging bands (Counting Crows, the Wallflowers) and the renewal of venerable artists (Ra...	Martinis & Bikinis With Martinis & Bikinis, Sam Phillips has revitalized the "Beatlesque" category with some substantial songwriting and a woman's voice, which turns the whole sound upside down. The Beatles hardly exhausted the possibilities of their late-'60s sound, and Phillips has the hooks and ...	The B-52 Band & the Fabulous Skylarks 1972 solo debut album.	All I Intended to Be Emmylou Harris has always had a way with woe. On All I Intended To Be, she seems more maudlin than ever as she sings her way through songs about loss, heartbreak, even the odd funeral. Of course, this is the kind of material Harris has always been comfortable with, but as her car...	Fan Dance For Sam Phillips, the days of star-making big-budget productions have passed. Having moved from Virgin, her major-label sponsor throughout the '90s, to Nonesuch, Phillips and longtime producer and husband T Bone Burnett have set aside the Beatle-esque pop that marked her uncovere...

A lost masterpiece
Like the reviewers below, I consider this to be a masterpiece. When it came out in 1992, I rated it the best album of its year (not the best Americana, or the best singer-songwriter, or the best in a specific category - it simply rated as the best album in any category of music that I heard that year - and I listen to lots). Yet it sank without trace. I saw just one (pathetic) review of it, and it never made any critical lists or best albums of the year summaries that I ever saw. In fact, I have only ever seen two copies of it (one at a friend's, and one in the shop, which is the one I bought). Why? It is not as if T-Bone is an unknown quantity. But let me put this album in perspective. There are folk songs on here that Bob Dylan wishes he could have written - and I am a big Dylan fan. Any fan of guitar based singer-songwriting simply needs to hear this album. And above all, this album has what far too many singer-songwriter albums do not - it is profoundly exciting. Not just bombastic histrionics on the guitar, but the excitement that comes from soulful engagement and revelation. As the songs lift sequentially from one level to the next, and as the soul of the material is progressively revealed, the effect is totally mesmerising. I find the sequencing of songs to be as strong as any that I have ever heard. And I still play the songs regularly, in sequence, 14 years later. For in addition to being a set of great songs, this also a great production - minimalist, sometimes piercing, sometimes reflective, but never banal. Maybe its time has finally come. T-Bone is about to release the follow-up, and we will see what he has been keeping under his hat for the last decade. And hopefully he will now take his rightful place in the pantheon of American singer-songwriters, as the soulful master that he is. But if you like edge, wit and sensitivity, informed by American folk and country idioms, do not overlook this one.

A stunning album
I already know the world is completely mad, so it comes as absolutely no surprise that not one person appears to have ever heard this excellent album (apologies to both reviewers who obviously have heard and thoroughly enjoyed the object of this review). T-Bone does not have the voice of a siren (thank God) but it's hardly neccessary with these songs as they are full of sharp insight and thoughtful observation, delivered with pathos and wit. The music itself on each and every song is oustanding, the musicianship impeccable and apart from encouraging you to taste and enjoy this for yourself, I can only say that I will be buying the very next T-Bone steak available. Rumour has it that there is a new album in the pipeline.

One of my all time favorites
There's nothing like this record. Buy it. If you buy it but don't like it, then you've got no taste. No way to describe it very well, though imagine if "Union Station" tried their hand at punk rock themes and pulled it off blazingly well. Every couple of years I pull this back out and wonder why I haven't listened to it more often. Some of it really, really hits me where I live and it does so in an edgy, raw way that could have only come out of the USA.

a criminally overlooked masterpiece
THE CRIMINAL UNDER MY OWN HAT was released in 1992 to nearly universal indifference. Just another example of the fact that there is no justice. Actually, the title cut did get some airplay on the short-lived *adult alternative* stations of the time, which is how I first heard it. CRIMINAL is a brilliant, powerful album -- it is T-Bone Burnett's masterpiece, and is among the finest albums of all time, I believe. The songs are superb, and their overall effect is stunning. This is truly an *album* and not just a collection of songs. The musicians are top-notch -- Jim Keltner on drums; Jerry Scheff, Roy Huskey, Jr. and Edgar Meyer on bass; Marc Ribot on guitar; Mark O'Connor on violin and mandolin; Jerry Douglas on dobro. Most of the songs are acoustic, but several are very electric, with driving bass and drums, and ferocious electric guitar (Criminals, Tear This Building Down, Humans From Earth, I Can Explain Everything). The lyrics range from the sincere and poignant to the sardonic to the hilarious. The overall mood, though, is serious -- intensely serious. I suppose this probably has something to do with why it was not more popular. The title track, for instance, goes 180 degrees against U.S. trend of "getting tough on crime": "There is no other I can blame, no other I can judge, no other I can cast in shame and require blood." A great line from "Primitives" is: "The frightening thing is not dying -- the frightening thing is not living." The "Humans from Earth" are: "...out here in the universe buying real estate ... looking for a planet where the air is fresh and the water clear ... you have nothing at all to fear, I think we're going to like it here..." "Tear This Building Down features the chorus from the old public domain song Sampson & Delilah over a Bo Diddley beat. A lying politician is indicted by the people and pleads pitifully "I can explain everything." The most chilling moment comes last. Over a pretty melody with mandolin and dobro the singer says: "We killed them at the palace, Babe, and we murdered them in Rome. We knocked them all dead, Babe, then we brought it all back home. There are those who play for money, Babe, there are those who play for fame, there are still those who only play for the love of the game." Quite a game to love. T-Bone hasn't been playing the singer-songwriter game since CRIMINAL, focusing instead on producing other people's records. THE CRIMINAL UNDER MY OWN HAT is going to be hard to top, but I hope T-Bone will try. I hope he's working on a new album after all these years, after the smash success of his soundtrack album OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? The world is full of "broken structures and false idols," but "it's not too late."

Oh Criminal Where Art Thou
This still stands as T Bone's most recent solo effort, which makes it puzzling that the record label hasn't reissued it--especially in light of his recent brush with fame due to "O Brother Where Art Thou." I'd rate this album as very solid, with my only reservation being that it doesn't sustain that lovely folk sound (featuring Mark O'Connor and Jerry Douglas) the same way his self-titled eighties effort did. But it's got at least five Burnett classics, I'd say, and among them are "Every Little Thing," "Tear This Building Down" and "Any Time at All." "Humans From Earth" is truly scathing, but I prefer the more stripped-down version on the "Until the End of the World" soundtrack. Try to find this one.