Flatlanders: Now Again : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Fans have called the Flatlanders "more a legend than a band" -- a Lubbock, Texas, group that captured a perfect moment in Seventies country. But Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock have never taken the epitaph very seriously, and on Now Again, their first album together in thirty years, they have a hell of a good time tearing it down. The ghosts of their hauntingly beautiful 1972 debut, The Flatlanders, remain -- old-timers will have a flashback hearing the mournful dobro echoing Gilmore's aching vocal on "Going Away." But the emphasis this time around is fun. The songs crackle with sly 'n' dry wit ("Yesterday was Judgment Day -- how'd you do?"), and even the Flatlanders' trademark instrument, the musical saw, seems used here with tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. Hancock and Gilmore hog all the best songs -- Hancock's "Julia" is the real standout -- but Ely's production packs all the spirited punch of his live shows. The result is a profoundly Texan take on the Traveling Wilburys; as legendary statements go, Now Again barely registers, but as a devil-may-care hoot, it's one for the ages.

RICHARD SKANSE
(RS 898 - June 20, 2002)