Jerusalem

Steve Earle's 'Jerusalem' features 11 songs including the title track, "I Remember You" a duet with Emmylou Harris, a song written with Sheryl Crow ("Go Amanda"), and the controversial "John Walker Blues".

'Jerusalem' is mainly a rock record, full of punkish grind suitable to the brimstone feel of the tunes like "Ashes to Ashes" and the neo-rap/talking blues of "Amerika v 6.0 (The Best We Can Do)." But with Steve, ever the eclectic sponge, you can always expect quirky musical surprises. Perhaps most stunning here is the R & B inflected "Conspiracy Theory".

In describing 'Jerusalem' Steve Earle's newest CD and his sixth album in six years, Earle says "This is a political record because there seems no other proper response to the place where we are at now. But I'm not trying to get myself deported or something. In a big way this is the most pro-American record I've ever made. In fact I feel urgently American. I understand why none of those congressmen voted against the Patriot Act, out of respect for the Trade Center victim's families. I've sat in the death house with victims' families, seen them suffer. But this is an incredibly dangerous piece of legislation. Freedoms, American freedoms, things voted into law as American freedoms, everything that came out of the 1960's, are disappearing, and as any patriot can see, that has to be opposed".

"John Walker's Blues", deals with John Walker Lindh, the erstwhile Marin County teenager and admitted Taliban fighter. Opening with the lines "I'm just an American boy - raised on MTV and I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads but none of 'em looked like me" and finishing with a recitation of Sura 47, Verse 19 of the Qur'an, Earle wrote the song as the newspapers clamoured for Walker to be strung up for treason. For Steve, the issue was a little more complicated than that.

"'Jerusalem' illustrates why Steve Earle is both respected and reviled as a songwriter and social commentator. On the one hand, he is arguably one of the greatest roots-rock songwriters of his generation. On the other, his outspoken political viewpoint (he is a vocal opponent of the death penalty, advocates greater recognition of Native American land rights and describes himself proudly as "…somewhat to the left of Mao") tends to antagonise conservatives and traditionalists.

'Jerusalem' is Earle's 'State of the Union' album and has elicited both enthusiastic praise and vitriolic condemnation. Earle sings of an America in which migrant workers struggle to make a living while HMO accountants fatten corporate profits by denying life-saving surgery. Most controversially, he sings of an America in which a young John Walker Lindh can feel so alienated and spiritually starved that his path to becoming the infamous 'American Taliban' can be empathised with.

A lesser songwriter would have turned such concerns into a series of clumsy diatribes. Fortunately, Earle has a gift for articulating the experiences of the marginalised and challenging listeners to acknowledge their shared humanity. He also knows how to write a great country rock song! Above all else, this is a great roots-rock album. It is also a lesson to other 'political' songwriters who peddle in vague platitudes and cliches that topical, political and controversial themes can also make damn good rock albums."
-AIDAN