For a while now i’ve tried to find artists, at least songs, that combined the moody, soundscape-ish, and experimental qualities of post-rock with the emotional content and instrumentation of country and blue grass music.
I call this potential genre of music ‘post-country’.
The problem is, i know of no bands that are dedicated to making post-country as their main genre of work, and most of what exists that i give this label to are scattered songs from various post-rock and country artists, while a few albums from bands like “Friends of Dean Martinez” hit the mark, but only for an album. When i type related terminology into a search engine, i find threads of other people looking for the same thing. It’s these threads where i’ve found most of the examples i’ve compiled elsewhere. I want to write this blog as another public attempt to articulate and collect this sort of stuff in one place, hopefully so it becomes less of a vague idea and more of actual musical movement.
Wikipedia says this about post-rock, if you aren’t familiar with it:
“Post-rock is a subgenre of rock music characterized by the influence and use of instruments commonly associated with rock, but using rhythms and “guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures” not traditionally found in rock. Post-rock bands are often without vocals.[2][3][4]”
If you plug “country music” in there instead of “rock”, we have a pretty good starting point.
To get a good handle on post-rock, it may help to go listen to a few tracks by Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, and Sigur Ros.
My dream is to enjoy dreamy music that evokes sublime rural landscapes and crashing thunderstorms. Think of some big band in a honky-tonk trying to play you an ambient orchestra piece with the instruments on hand. Minimal lyrics, experimental structures, county twang, and ambient soundscapes rising in crashing and melodic crescendos. If you’ve read some of my other posts you may know that ground-up culture and land/region based identity are important to me, and this effort for a post-country movement is in part caused by sections of my youth having occurred in rural areas with country music as a constant background score. Modern radio country is generally unpleasant to me, and i’d like a genre that reflects my love of country instrumentation as well as my affinity for experimental rock and garage style jams.
And while post-country is my priority, i’m also interested in any attempts at ‘Bootgaze’ music and Ambient Americana. Bootgaze would be a similar concept to post-country in that a slightly related genre of music, shoegaze, would be fused with country and folk sounds for a different emotional and aesthetic experience.
Shoegaze music tends to be a kind of alternative rock typified by dreamy soundscapes where the use of pedal effects like distortion and feedback merge many of the instruments sounds into ‘walls of sound’. Bootgaze would be the same idea, but with a focus on the use of country and folk instruments. Check out Slowdive or My Bloody Valentine
To round it out, Ambient Americana would be a general term for any ambient or instrumental music that clearly was inspired by folk, blue grass, country, or southwestern sounds. Jay Ungar’s or Bill Frisell’s work comes to mind.
Instruments i think that would be important and prominent in post-country:
Slide guitars (lap slides and also guitars just played with a slide), banjos, steel guitars and resonators, harmonicas, violins, cellos, organs, pianos, mandolins, accordions, and all the instruments we associate with rock and roll. I think brushes used on drums would be utilized more than they are for rock and roll. Slide guitar sticks out as a prominent part of the idea as a whole.
Anyway, if you have the same interest to see this become its own musical movement, then get on it! …Cuz i don’t have any musical talent.
If you could, collect examples of it in some public forum and go out and make it if you have any musical ability! And please, leave music recommendations as comments on this blog post! l’m always looking for more.
I made a youtube playlist collecting the examples i’ve found that i update now and then. Some of the examples hit closer to the mark than others, but all tend to have some little element i’m looking for:
(You can use the icon in the top left corner to look at the whole list, or hop through each track with the fast forward/ rewind looking buttons around the play button)
*******Addendum*****
Youtube is a bad place for a permanent list, i should just make a list of artists or songs here, since videos are taken down and made private on the tube constantly
————————————————————————————-
The wiki for ‘post-rock’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-rock
The wiki for ‘shoegaze’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoegazing
A page i found getting to a similar point:
“The sound of the west is deep in our collective DNA. From Aaron Copland‘s “Billy the Kid” to Gary Burton‘s Duster andExplosions in the Sky‘s Friday Night Lights score, it manifests itself in evocative ways. It’s not the call of broken hearts and beer, line dancing and trucking. Instead, it taps into the landscapes, mysticism and mythology of a true west.”
http://www.echoes.org/AmbientAmericana.html
Another thread getting at something similar:
http://www.discogs.com/group/thread/482644
and another:
and another:
I’m going to make a ‘post-country sampler’ that i hand out to friends, i think.
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Check out SUSS on Northern Spy Records.
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yaah, this looks promising
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http://www.allmusic.com/album/slim-westerns-mw0000126620
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This is exactly what I’ve been looking for!
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Awesome! Yer the reason i made the blog!
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Steven R. Smith’s album “Tableland” may be a big contender
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So glad to have found someone else looking into this! I have been working on an album over the past two years that I hope will fall into these genres. I will keep you posted!
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AWESOME
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check out Powder River. Montana and Missouri boys who make ambient shoegaze electro-country https://powderriver.bandcamp.com/
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oh nice
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I’d also recommend Ry Cooder’s masterful music to Paris, TX for anyone. It’s very “pioneering” in this style.
Eno & Lanois’s groundbreaking album Apollo also has elements of post-country in it. Specifically the track Deep Blue Day.
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🙂 part of it is on my youtube playlist
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“Paris, TX” that is
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This Eno track is growing on me.
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Check out Daniel Lanois’ album “Belladonna”.
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i love suggestions, i’ll definitely check out
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http://www.rfshannonmusic.com
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Hi. Really enjoyed this blog post, as I`m a big fan of this music myself. Feel free to check out my music, my latest album is called “Pomona”. All About Jazz calls it “Nordic Americana”, a mix between jazz, americana and more country-ish music.
A couple of live clips:
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i’m currently looking into the ‘Dead Man 1995 Movie Soundtrack(Music By:Neil Young)’ and newer Earth stuff (‘HEX’ and after)
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If you’re on Spotify you could check out this playlist I just made before searching google for similar stuff and finding your post. https://open.spotify.com/user/kissenschlacht/playlist/1mmXn10yUryQUmiIK5iVSx
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It’s taken me awhile, but here are demos for the ‘bootgaze’/’post-country’ record I’m working on. Would love to hear your thoughts!
https://plainspeakofficial.bandcamp.com/releases
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i dig, could use a bit more ‘boot’ though for this genre
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i’m looking for some post-rock with that wild west feeling and found something interesting here
https://www.musicbed.com/songs?genres=post-rock&instruments=banjo
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“lowercase noises” seems promising
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Search for Halfway. Australian band. 5 albums. All great. 6th on the way. I’m biased
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I love your description about “My dream is to enjoy dreamy music that evokes sublime rural landscapes and crashing thunderstorms.” Perfect. I found this page looking for “country ambient”. And I concur…Post-Country needs to be a thing.
Have you heard these new songs from the Far Cry 5 OST? Personally I adore it.
Also Calexico sometimes delves into this territory.
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yeah, Calexico on the list
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these are great
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this is such a tantalizing quest…
I feel like a hunter in pursuit of game, this is something I will literally never stop thinking about
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yeah, same same
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Some contenders on this playlist https://open.spotify.com/user/bobandted/playlist/4tfr51yYeydHqzvaZ2y5JE?si=bhFh02HEQVi2NRa0l7iaVw
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Mate. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, “The Proposition” OST. Get amongst it.
Also, thanks for writing this blog – it’s helped me put a name to something I knew I wanted but didn’t know how to articulate.
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Daniel Lanois made an album this year called “Goodbye To Language”. It’s him playing pedal steel and mixing in some dreamy electronics. I think it definitely fits in here! https://daniellanois.bandcamp.com/album/goodbye-to-language
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i’m intrigued
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Thanks for this. I’ve had the same thoughts!
check out The Ferdy Mayne and Hnry Flwr too.
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this is amazing. Thanks for this.
Not quite the fitting in but close are brooklyn bands The Ferdy Mayne and Hnry Flwr. at least to my ears
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I’ve been looking for something like this too! So far the closest things I’ve been able to find are Mazzy Star, Mojave 3, and Movie Tone, but still wish there were like really swelly, big versions of more pop/rock fast tempo’d country songs, plus slides. Digging to Bootgaze youtube playlist so far. Thanks for making it.
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Prime Bootgaze imho:
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I was going to say Mojave 3 nailed and also check out Grant Lee Buffalo(way ahead of their time) I listen to fairly often.
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vid unavailable 😦
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It was a link to Baby’s Driving Too Fast by Mojave 3
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Like some have said Mojave 3.
Also, check out Grant Lee Buffalo 1st and 2nd album are brilliant.
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I’ve been hunting for ambient Americana for ages too! Eric Tingstal is one act who fits nicely, I think, into the area you’re looking for.
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Long-time re-reader of this post, first-time commentator-tot. Your ideas here really touched me. I’d struggled to find a genre to give people looking to summarize my music. I’m highly trained, so American Primitive is out. I don’t sing much, so Neo Folk is out. You get the idea. Ambient Americana, though! Wow. Thank you for that. Email me your mailing address, I’ll send you free merch.
My first foray into actual Ambient Americana is on YouTube. More coming.
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Have any links to your stuff?
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BrotherJimbo.com has all my links. The video I just posted is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8krK88Kb4
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https://brotherjimbo.com
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I came here after listening to a lot of Crippled Black Phoenix. I think they embody the Western aesthetic quite well.
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Have you heard Japancakes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japancakes)? I think of them as ambient country, and they did a full album cover of Loveless (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9k9Vq1Wo3I&list=PLKQaA0P-CONbYwTXnnJC4cFSoiPQshxOi), which is just wonderful.
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Yeah, they have some good stuff. I had one of their songs on the playlist, but I haven’t checked to see if it has been taken down lately
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Tulsa drones also made an album that fits this bill.
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I’ll need to gander then
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Are you familiar with Orville Peck? I’d call him post-punk outlaw country. Cash/Orbison/Joy Division kinda stuff. Definitely blends in some bootgazey atmospheres.
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i need to check it out
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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/09/a-reconsideration-of-the-white-male-cowboy-the-rise-of-ambient-country
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holy moly
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I wanted this to be a thing and by golly I’m gonna make it happen: https://iantavishstone.bandcamp.com/album/bootgaze
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I’m into it
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Try the first two albums of The Corespondents”. Great new take over american primitive / prairie-gaze
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Yer blowing my mind with the concept of “prairie gaze”
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[…] In my never-ending quest to find music to listen to while writing that won’t overwhelm me with lyrics I find myself in weird, barely mapped corners of the genre map from time to time, and my current stomping ground is Bootgaze. Think desert soundscapes, lonely highways, Acid Western soundtracks, philosophical cowpokes, lonesome murderers, burnished mesas against deep indigo starscapes. I think it barely counts as a subgenre; there aren’t enough people doing it (still, Grebo was maybe two dozen people at most). There doesn’t seem to be much writing about it so far, although this fella has some notes. […]
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Hey hey!
Glad to see my post has reached a few people.
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