: No Depression: An Introduction To Alternative Country Music (Whatever That Is)

No one can speak definitively of the new wave of alternative country music, and the editors of No Depression, the magazine that sometimes lends its name to the movement, know this. The parenthetical subtitle of this collection of articles from the magazine isn't just there for the sake of being cute. You can recognize a punk song from its opening chords—unless you add strings or sing it a cappella on E.R.—but the same can't be said of alt-country. In many ways, the lack of definition and the wide variety of styles found beneath the alt-country banner are what make the trend toward expressions of country music outside the Nashville system so exciting. Since 1995, No Depression has covered the scene (whatever that is) with concert reviews, exhaustive record reviews, and artist profiles. Only profiles are featured here, in articles whose subjects range from the obvious (Son Volt, Wilco, The Jayhawks, Steve Earle) to the less so (16 Horsepower, Freakwater, Bad Livers, Cheri Knight, and nearly everyone else). The pieces are largely well-written, illuminating their subjects and, in the process, indirectly explaining why they belong on the magazine's pages. No Depression's writers also have a good sense of how the music they cover falls within the history of popular music in general (articles are peppered with references to The Sex Pistols and A Tribe Called Quest) and the history of country music in particular. It's this latter sense that contributes to one of the magazine's, and this collection's, stronger elements: profiles of country artists from the past—like Waylon Jennings, Charlie Louvin, Chip Taylor, and Guy Clark—who were alt-country before alt-country was cool. In an age when even George Jones finds himself without a record deal, a sense of history and a remembrance of a time when country wasn't all sequins and microphone headsets is more important than ever. Readers may leave this primer still unable to define "alternative country," but they should have a better sense of what it is.