High Straight in Plainview

Terry Allen : Amarillo Highway

[Purchase]

In 1979 the multi-talented Lubbock, Texas songwriter Terry Allen released Lubbock (On Everything), regarded by fans as his masterpiece. Among those fans is David Byrne who wrote the liner notes for the album when Paradise of Bachelors reissued the album in 2016. Like Byrne, Allen is most comfortable as an outsider artist who writes songs, paints, and dabbles in musical and video. The two have become friends. 

Allen's music isn't true country. It's that West Texas sound that have us Buddy Holly, The Flatlanders, Joe ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Byrne describes the music as Americana and goes on to say:

Having sat in with Terry more than once, I know that these songs are not as easy to play as I, for one, might have assumed. Sometimes there is an “extra” bar, and sometimes there’s an “extra extra” bar, as the music often follows the lyrics and the peculiar phrasing of the singer. Terry is a storyteller, after all, and the cadence and timing of the words cue the punchlines. Though the music might be vernacular—a mix of country, Latin, and Texas rock—he blends those genres to fit his own ends. It’s familiar sounding, but at the same time something’s off, and that something is what intrigues; it’s what keeps you paying attention.

Although he had moved to Los Angeles and seen "Amarillo Highway" recorded by Bobby Bare and "New Delhi Freight Train" by Little Feat, Allen moved back to his hometown to record this double album with Joe Ely's band. It's full of cynical humor that may bring to mind Randy Newman, but Allen is one of a kind. 

As Pitchfork summed up in a recent review:

Decades after the Lubbock of Allen’s childhood has passed, this double-LP is still a powerful dreamscape, capturing a West Texas that may never have quite existed, but Lubbock (on everything) certainly makes it feel like it did.