Steve Earle: Jerusalem : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In the liner notes to Jerusalem, his most strident work in years, Steve Earle offers a broad definition of patriotism -- one that encompasses not just the authors of the Constitution but Malcolm X, Bobby Seale and Martin Luther King Jr., because they defended American ideals "by insisting on asking the hardest questions in our darkest hours."

That's what Earle, proud Tennessee rebel, is trying to do with these ornery narratives about post-9/11 America. Positioning himself somewhere between liberal scolder and beatific wise man, Earle revisits the astringent riff rock of his finest albums. He starts out talking in biblical allegories ("Ashes to Ashes"), and later goes street level to sketch an unwitting pawn in the Drug War on the hillbilly stomp "What's a Simple Man to Do?" The Stones-y, acidic "Amerika v. 6.0 (The Best We Can Do)" laments the bottom-line thinking that's infected every corner of American life, as Earle bitterly observes, "There's doctors down on Wall Street sharpenin' their scalpels and tryin' to cut a deal/Meanwhile, back at the hospital, we got accountants playin' God and countin' out the pills."

In other hands, such ripped-from-the-news material would sound like hectoring. But Earle is a sly storyteller -- even when he's peering into the mind of American Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh, on the eerie Eastern devotional "John Walker's Blues," he's really telling a tale of great disillusionment, about a lost Everykid who goes on a lonely search and finds out how faith can be twisted to justify extreme acts. Earle's vocals are raw and blunt throughout, and though the topical stuff stands out, one of the few personal songs, "Go Amanda," contains a mantra that seems to have shaped all of the riled-up Jerusalem: "Lose the sadness/Use the anger."