Reviews Music / Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs

Atmospheric, moody, mostly thoughtful, rarely banal, and well worth seeking out.

Gonna try something a bit different here, hope it works. Also glad I checked before coming here; turns out Marty Robbins didn't write all the songs on this album so I can't come for some of the wackier lyrics or the odd fixation on having the outlaws have killed almost exactly the same number of men. (Twenty.) I'm also working off the 1999 version, which I own. Taken as a whole, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs is (mostly) a remarkably coherent and cohesive set of meditations on the fleeting impermanence of life and the cold futility of living violently.

"Big Iron," as the Fallout: New Vegas fans who probably discovered this album through it can attest, is a cracking good start, and a fun story-song about an outlaw and his natural predator dueling, and the outlaw coming up short, a motif that will show up throughout the album. While later treatments will be more melancholic, this is the opener, and so is the most action-movie of the set, with a gruff and unfriendly anti-hero and a clear bad guy we are never truly invited to sympathize with.

Unfortunately, rather than moving from strength to strength, we immediately run aground on "A Hundred and Sixty Acres." While not necessarily a terrible song per se (it has a nice simple tune to it, for instance), it doesn't really fit the motif of the "ballad" that permeates the rest of the album, and seems like the distant and unwelcome ancestor of the meaningless "rural pride" song that infests the modern country genre and leads to its present poor reputation. No story, no hook, no reason not to hit the skip button once you've heard it once.

Happily, things re-rail with "They're Hanging Me Tonight," a slow-burning Murder Ballad in which the protagonist gradually reveals the depth of his crimes, and the violent remorse that consumes him even as he can't quite bring himself to stop hating the man he killed in mad jealousy that also claimed the life of his former woman. The flowing vocals and instrument work complement the imagery of rain and stormy weather well.

"Cool Water" isn't quite in the same aesthetic as the more story-heavy songs elsewhere, but it's actually a really good song full of beautiful imagery that does much to evoke the image of a man so thirsty he sees water everywhere. And the group chorus lends it a strange, surreal feel, raising questions of how much of what's going on is just in the protagonist's head.

"Billy the Kid" is... fine. It's not bad, but as a song unto itself it's mostly just a worse version of "Big Iron" in both music and lyric, and doesn't do a good job of turning the titular legend into an interesting story. That said, it's more melancholic than "Big Iron" (though still not very melancholic), and continues the albums as a whole's look into the tragic futility of trying to break bad for gold and glory.

"Utah Carol" is a great tragedy piece, about how the heroism of the titular character's death both does and doesn't comfort those he leaves behind. While some of the imagery (thunder and lightning) is a bit repetitive in the context of the album as a whole, it provides important contrast to the remorseful outlaw anti-heroes of the other songs; a man who dies, manfully, laying down his life to defend those he loves without a moment's hesitation or regret.

"The Strawberry Roan" is tragically misplaced in what's otherwise the best part of the album; a silly story-song about a braggart horsebreaker who meets his match. While actually one of the better-written songs in terms of lyric and imagery, and musically well-put-together, it just doesn't have the same powerful, evocative themes as "Utah Carol," "Running Gun," or "The Master's Call." Not bad enough to skip, but not good enough to not impatiently wait through.

"The Master's Call" is one of my two favorite songs on the album, both deep cuts. A dramatic modern version of the Damascus Road narrative, and one of the best songs about Christianity I've ever heard on an album whose treatment of spirituality is largely limited to mentioning the odd preacher's final summation, it both musically and lyrically captures the raw, intense emotions of remorse and terror that drive the wicked protagonist to change his ways. And the candid admission of how little he deserves the second chance he's gotten, in the almost-literal middle of an album where second chances are few, makes the mystery of God's granting that second chance all the more powerful.

From it, we jump straight to my other favorite, "Running Gun," an energetic song that equally-masterfully moves from hope to sorrowful despair, as the singer, a remorseful hired killer, tries and fails to escape the lethal consequences of his actions long after the mental consequences have driven him to try to. It has the best summation of the hollowness of being the best and painting the target on your back on the album, and it's anchored in the protagonist's touching and tragically impossible wish to be happy with the woman he loves.

Which finally brings us to the famed centerpiece of the album, "El Paso." Or at least the singles version. Musically, I see why; it's got an adventurous and unusual time signature, with flowing and dreamlike guitarwork and paradoxically-beautiful lyrics that all catalogue a dark, bleak story of obsession and death. (At least as I interpreted it on first listen and still prefer; apparently the sequel retools it into a much less interesting traditional love song.) I especially like the dark irony of the protagonist's dying dream of somehow having won the love of a woman he admits never loved him back by murdering her lover as he bleeds out in the street, riddled with the law's bullets. It's the best murder ballad on the album, and while it lacks the thematic heft of the heart tracks, it has its own dark heart as the worst of the human condition is on display through the delusional and murderous protagonist.

"In the Valley" and "The Little Green Valley," while less memorable than most of their peers, are at least better than "A Hundred and Sixty Acres" by virtue of their connection to human feelings of longing; the former for one's lover to return, the latter for home after being away for so long. They don't have the impressive music of "Cool Water," but the imagery is beautiful and they're both a bit deeper in that way. Good filler tracks.

"Saddle Tramp" is a song I should have no patience for. If "A Hundred and Sixty Acres" is the ancestor of the modern "rural pride" country infestation, then this is the ancestor of "bro country;" a meathead song about riding around and refusing to let the ladies who love you tie you down. But... it's got some good music behind it, and for better or worse I relate better to such a protagonist when he's an old west drifter on a horse than a modern redneck in a truck. Maybe that's a double-standard, but it's mine and I can only be honest with my own feelings here.

And we close out with a completely-unnecessary second version of "El Paso." I get it: you want the unedited version but also want the version people are familiar with. But clapping it on the end is an inelegant compromise.

Overall, still a great album well deserving of its place in history. Its worst songs aren't bad, and its best songs are gut-punches. While the rhymes are sometimes awkward and rough, and while the imagery is sometimes repetitive, such times it still usually succeeds through pure emotion, and through never shying away from the tragedy and brevity of the human condition.