James McMurtry is the son of Larry McMurtry - author of the phenomenal Western ‘Lonesome Dove’. If you’ve ever read this book or seen the brilliant film adaptation with its stellar line up including Robert Duvall and Tommy Jones, then you’ll know that this is a narrative that’s brilliantly adheres to the particularly quirky traits of the South while deepening its tale via tangents of wisdom and a struggle for a better existence, with its inevitable fuck ups along the way.
Fast forward and now Larry’s son James is in the story tellers chair, and the world sure has changed but we’re still swamped with problems, this time however, of a different nature and of someone else’s doing. Mr George W. Bush.
And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
Songs of a political disposition are often unsteady ground. Sometimes they’ll come across as uninformed ramblings of wannabe politico hot-heads, sometimes they’ll come across as do-gooder slurs of clueless uneducated part-time anarchists but very rarely they’ll strike a nerve of sincerity and authenticity. Springsteen is completely capable of crafting a politico anthem that actually endures worthy substance, much like The Clash and Dylan, but new music rarely hit’s the spot and reflects little more than just another musical faux pas, an ill-informed cliché without heart.
With James McMurtry however, it’s different. It’s hardly a new song, penned during the height of Bush’s corruption and lies as he and his crooked colleagues flashed untrue claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but it’s a vital rock and roll anthem that demonstrates the fist-fighting vigour of rock and roll sure aint lost. In ‘We Can’t Make It Here’, a song from McMurtry‘s 2007 album, ‘Childish Things‘, the song writing, guitar-tooting Southerner ignores the focal point of these oil-hungry lying smear-merchants and sings about the struggle of soldiers returning from someone else’s Hollywood war - much likes The Boss’s ‘Born In The USA’ and ‘Atlantic City’.
Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Lyrically this is one of the most accomplished and sincere songs of the last ten years. It’s blistering country-rock riff calls to mind films like ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘The Deer Hunter’ with its conspicuously 70s Southern bar-room-rock sound. It’s the sort of sound that paints explicit images of an era that we’ve come to conjure through the songs of that time. Jefferson Airplane in ‘Platoon’, The Doors in ‘Apocalypse Now’ and Creedence in ‘Forest Gump’.
‘We can’t make it here’ isn’t in a film though. It’s the soundtrack of coherent problems. We don’t have producers picking songs to soundtrack our lives, the bands and the artists do that themselves and you pick the soundtrack to your own existence, and even though you don’t know it, McMurtry has penned an anthem to soundtrack all of our lives. Locked up far away in middle class suburbia or a boarding school in the far ends of Scotland or a semi-detached in leafy Surrey or University Halls in Birmingham, you may think you’re safe - and although you are, this shit continues to trundle on through the world and McMurtry has found a way to bring the terror and strife and heartache to your door - and you better fucking listen.
Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore
With the current economic climate, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and the countless soldiers who wont return home to their families this Christmas and the endless bloodshed throughout the world, the struggle faced by the lucky ones who return is colossal.
As well as focusing on the money problems of people in today’s crumbling society, this mind-blowing rocked-up power-house punch draws on the dying identity of America, the jobless and the homeless, the imported goods that have forced unemployment to an all-time high, the throw-away nature of society and the general despair felt by thousands upon thousands of people throughout the world.
With it's filthy distorted-out guitar sound and layered out wailing vocals that pile up on the song like the bulked-up harmonies of John Fogerty on a Bloodkin record, this is one hell of an anthemic heartbeat of hope.
Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
This isn’t some moral message that’s going to tell you to get up off your arse and fucking do something, because I’m guilty of this, we all are. It’s just a message telling you to listen to this song - there’s still some good left in this world, and at times, I think that this song could be why McMurty was sent to us in the first place…
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