Steve Earle: The Revolution Starts...Now : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The cliche is that rockers don't make protest music like they used to. Maybe that's because they turn it out too slowly. Steve Earle's roiling The Revolution Starts . . . Now shows how rousing, angry songs can spring from the one-take heat of a recording session. An unrepentant anti-careerist, Earle was emboldened by the controversy surrounding his 2002 terrorist portrait "John Walker's Blues." Here he takes dead aim at Iraq and war, with only a few breaks -- notably a romantic-interlude duet with Emmylou Harris. The rugged guitar tunes resemble a cow-punk update of the Clash, and Earle's song-to-song perspective shifts dazzle: from a hapless truck driver caught in the conflict to a common grunt and a universalized "Warrior" to an honest declaration of lust for Condoleezza Rice that's as deliciously blunt as her recent blurt about being married to the president. Recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandals, The Revolution Starts ... Now is easily the most potent roar about Iraq so far.