What goes on backstage or in the studio is supposed to stay backstage or in the studio. Some of the footage Hennig digs up for his documentary of a once robust and sunny Gram Parsons looking bloated and lost is shocking. But that doesn’t diminish the material on GP, Grievous Angel, or the bonus disc of alternate takes from both albums included in The Complete Reprise Sessions. Whatever his condition, Parsons got through the sessions just fine, channeling his romantic images of the American South and his love of George Jones, Merle Haggard, the Everly Brothers, and the Louvin Brothers into the melancholy “The New Soft Shoe” and “A Song for You,” the fiddle-laced square-dancing “Still Feeling Blue,” and the gospel-flavored “She.” Grievous Angel has only two “new” Parsons tunes, and his voice isn’t exactly in its finest form. But he pulls himself together for an arresting “Love Hurts” duet with Harris. In fact, throughout both discs he sings and writes from the point of view of an artist struggling to pull himself together so that he can get on with his mission — preaching country gospel to the rock masses.
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This article originally appeared in the June 17, 1975 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
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It wouldn’t be fair to blame Jeremy Enigk for the current overabundance of “emo” — a style that entails sensitive guys laying their hearts on the line to a degree that verges on sickening.
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U.S. Ez , emboldened by all sorts of sloppiness, works in the way of Lomax’s porch recordings, forcing rock and roll back into a folk tradition.
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