Whiskeytown: Pneumonia : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For two years, the now-defunct Whiskeytown were caught in a music-industry maelstrom of mergers and cutbacks that left the band without a label or distribution. Having suffered through all this heavy weather, they appropriately titled their third and last album Pneumonia. But Whiskeytown sound far from infirm here. Anchored by core members Ryan Adams (who released an impressive solo album, Heartbreaker, last year), Mike Daly and Caitlin Cary, and helped along by the Replacements' Tommy Stinson, the Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha and drummer-producer Ethan Johns, Pneumonia is a strong collection of Wilco-like ballads and pop-ish midtempo musings on love, loss and life lessons. Songs such as the heartfelt "Ballad of Carol Lynn," the near-flawless "Jacksonville Skyline" and the playful "Mirror Mirror" feature Adams' sometimes slouchy, other times soulful singing. Backed by acoustic-guitar rambles, subtle backbeats, the occasional barroom piano riff and the sweet drift of Cary's fiddle, Adams paints soundscapes rich in detail and narrative. Pneumonia sometimes gets bogged down in its succession of moody, slow-groove numbers. Still, it's a nice farewell from a band that was at the forefront of today's thriving alt-country scene. (RS 869 - May 24, 2001)

ROBERT SANTELLI