Pull Up Some Dust & Sit Down

 (25 customer reviews)

In the same way that Neil Young gave a vitriolic state of the nation report to America with 2006's "Living with war" we now have another veteran guitarist and giant of real music making a similar declaration. Like Young, the Californian master musician Ry Cooder doesn't like very much of what he sees at the present time whether it be greedy bankers, embezzling landlords, lamentable television, rabble rousing politicians and the prospect of young men being sent into early graves. The great news is that he wraps up all this social comment in "Pull up some dust and sit down" in some of the finest songs he has recorded in years. This album sees a return to the funky preoccupations of "Bop til you drop" with an excellent gospel base, a nice Mexican tinge and a reverential nod to the folk protest of Woody Guthrie. Throughout the musicianship is so good its almost criminal and its worth stressing that as a protest album Cooder's latest is jam packed with sly humour and repeated listens will...Read more

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down takes the the listener further along Ry Cooder's triumphal progress into his elder years. There is real poignancy in both lyrics and music, the same poignancy that found expression in the character of Kash Buck in I Flathead. The world has changed and not for the better; it's inevitably easier to see that with greater clarity at 64 than in your early twenties, his age when he recorded his first solo albums. Then he sang the blues, both of the dustbowl and the delta. Now he sings a perhaps more universal blues of loss and regret, but not of bitterness.

Above all, Ry Cooder is a folk musician - folk, as in regular people. Character is his forte as a singer - he has always found a voice in both his own and others' songs that expresses human quirks and idiosyncrasies, passions and follies in ways that the lyrics may only have hinted at. Ry is a true character actor, as well as being one the very best musicians working in America today. In this...Read more

Wow! Whew! This cd is quite a ride... There is some great classic Cooder playing/sound/style here, and he pulls no punches in his view of where things are at in the US of A of late. The range of vocal stylings and sounds is amazing - on several occasions I asked myself, "Is that Ry singing on this one?". A number of powerful, funny, sad, angry songs. I'm really diggin it, but it will not suit everyone's (political) sensibilities. I definitely get the comparison to Guthrie. Most everything is played by Ry accompanied by his son, Joachim, on drums. If you like Cooder, check it out.