You Can Never Go Fast Enough
V/A Tribute to the "Film Two Lane Blacktop"

In 1969, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper shoved Sixties counter-culture down the collective throat of mainstream America with their classic biker movie, " Easy Rider." Aside from ushering in one of the most fertile periods in American cinema, "Easy Rider" spawned a host of other road movies in its wake. "Two Lane Blacktop," a tale of two aimless characters drag racing their way across America, is one of them. In the years since, "Two Lane Blacktop" has developed a bit of a cult following, and the fact that it starred two well known musicians of its day (James Taylor and Dennis Wilson) probably has something to do with the reason why numerous contemporary musicians admire this film enough to contribute to Plain Recordings' tribute album, "You Can Never Go Fast Enough."

Okay, I feel the need to confess: I've never seen " Two Lane Blacktop." Having spent three years of my life working in an indie video store, I can tell you that not many other people have either. But fuck it anyway, an artistic work should be able to stand on its own two feet, so let's just forget about the movie for now and talk about this compilation instead.

The album opens with "Little Maggie," an exuberant banjo instrumental by Sandy Bull which was dug up from the archives for inclusion on this compilation. It's clean and light, and would seem to portend good things for the album, but the next offering, "Don't Cry, Driver" by Alan Licht, quickly takes the wind out of your sails. This one starts off giving the appearance of being a tear-in-your-beer ballad, but soon transforms into an extended spoken word meditation on street racing and the open road, rife with gearhead lingo and forced swagger. Spoken word pieces like these sound best when they're issuing forth from the tobacco-blown vocal chords of a Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen, but here we fall victim to an uninspired and nearly unintelligible recitation that sounds like it's being read off a lyric sheet by a gawky nerd like Todd Solondz.

Alvarius B's "Sleep Gunner" is a languid acoustic interlude that is reminiscent of Nick Drake in both composition and recording quality, and is followed by " No Doze," offered up by Calexico. This track is a pleasant enough mood-setter, evoking imagery of tumbleweeds and flat empty spaces, but based on the strength of Calexico's latest full release one gets a strong sense that this may just be a throwaway track.

Next up we find Wilco emulating Randy Newman on " Old Maid," one of the comp's standout songs. This good-natured tune features a strolling melody and smirking wordplay like "Old maid / you can count your chickens when you get laid" and "Let's put the horse behind the cart / and make some hay." Wilco's contribution is followed by Steffen Basho-Junghans's " Lazy Waters," a nice but unremarkable exercise in sliding guitar that wears out its welcome by treading the same chords repeatedly.

"What the Girl Didn't Say" by Mark Eitzel marks the album's midpoint, and earns the unpleasant distinction of most incongruous song on the record. With its samples of maniacal laughter riding over a bed of droning sound, this one evokes the uncomfortable malevolence of a bad fever dream, or perhaps the soundtrack to "Lost Highway," take your pick. Aside from being plainly unpleasant to the ear, Eitzel's contribution also commits the cardinal sin of music compilations: inconsistency. The sting is doubly painful since we know that Eitzel is capable of such plaintive lyrical beauty, but here we aren't even paid the respect of hearing his voice.

Roscoe Holcomb next offers up a slice of authentic Southern folk-blues in "Boat's Up the River." Holcomb singing is more than a little out of tune, but his vocal foibles can be forgiven on account of his earnestness and skilled picking.

A minor gem can be found buried two-thirds through the album in Suntanama's offering, "Parallels." This one has a warm quirkiness derived from a bubbly layering of instrumentation in which each member of the group seems to be playing their own song, while the collective sound still maintains a loose and groovy coherence. This is the type of music Zappa would have composed had he spent his formative years in the deep South.

Giant Sand lends a hand with "Vanishing Point," a track that is sadly lackluster in its arrangement, offering some interesting moments but ultimately feeling unrealized as a whole. Similar sentiments are felt for Charalambides' "Flying Machine," a mood-setter consisting of jangling guitar and Enya-like moaning, which is pretty unnotable except for the closing moments of the song in which guitar and vocals hit and sustain the same note in a brief moment of wavering, transcendent beauty. Blues icon Leadbelly also graces the album with his rarity, " Stewball," a showcase of 12-string guitar and vocal harmonization that is worth the listen if you can tolerate the Great Depression-era sound production.

YCNGFE then shifts back into contemporary mode for the remainder of the album, with Sonic Youth making their obligatory appearance on yet another compilation via "Loop Cat," a noise piece consisting of a series of sound motifs tenuously strung together by a covey of sound loops and superfluous sound effects. Cat Power brings a dose of hollowed-out desperation with her lovely, chorus-less cover of the Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." This is one of the album's highlights, but those of you who have already heard this on her covers album will find nothing new here.

The album's closer, "2LB" by Ray Montgomery, will be sure to leave a bad taste in the mouth of even the most forgiving listener. This piece is an instrumental featuring a repetitive electronic drum beat and distorted-to-the-nth-degree guitar riffing. Montgomery's contribution is indulgent, redundant, and unnecessarily long at just under twelve and a half minutes. Indeed, the worst tunes on this disc also happen to be the longest, with the compilation's three weakest tracks chewing up over a third of the album's length. It's a damn shame, because with a running time of nearly seventy-five minutes, Plain Recordings could have trimmed some of the fat from this bloated effort and still have a comp of acceptable length and markedly higher quality. As it stands, however, YCNGFE is best suited for completists and those who believe this album will somehow enhance their enjoyment of "Two Lane Blacktop." It probably won't.
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