Country music, R.E.M. and chakras

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about a Toto song that bore some resemblance to Bon Jovi and how my inability to sort out what makes them different has bothered me for years. Well, now I’ve got a new pairing of similar-sounding artists that’s driving me up a wall.

On the latest episode of You, Me and An Album, Jeff Erickson introduced me to Uncle Tupelo’s debut album, No Depression. Uncle Tupelo is a band I knew about but I had never listened to one second of their music. The same goes for Son Volt, the band Jay Farrar created upon leaving Uncle Tupelo. Even though I’ve been hearing people rave about Wilco — the other band that came out of the splintering of Uncle Tupelo — for at least 25 years, I only started listening to them over the last couple of years, and not much at that.

As I mentioned repeatedly on this latest episode, I appreciated what I was hearing from Uncle Tupelo on No Depression, but I wasn’t in love with it. Yet I heard similarities between them and one of my favorite bands, R.E.M. The same could be said of the other country, alt-country and Americana acts that have been featured on You, Me and An Album for reasons that are probably obvious. From “Catapult” to “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” to “Texarkana” (and, of course, “Country Feedback”), the country influences in many of R.E.M.’s songs are impossible to ignore.

It seems to me that, since I love nearly every song that R.E.M. has ever done, I should like country music. Or at the very least, I should enthusiastically enjoy alt-country and Americana bands, which — like R.E.M. — fuse country with other musical traditions, including rock. However, after being exposed to Uncle Tupelo, Waylon Jennings, Margo Price, The Chicks, John Hiatt, New Grass Revival, Jimmy Buffett, Old 97s and Houndmouth on various episodes and not feeling especially exuberant about any of the albums, I’m starting to think that country/alt-country/Americana just might not be for me. I admire the songwriting and musicianship of each of these artists, but I haven’t been motivated to go back to any of their albums.