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Screen Door Music/Various Artists
13 Ways to Live
Red
House Records
Reviewed by Tracy M. Rogers
 
From the political to the personal and the diplomatic to the humanitarian, responses
to the Iraq war are many in the highly politicized society of an election
year. The full range of these responses is movingly represented in 13 Ways
to Live. Produced by Screen Door Music, an Austin-based instrumental
trio, 13 Ways to Live is a benefit record featuring thirteen songs and
vocals by such alt-country luminaries as Patty Griffin, Eliza Gilkyson, Abra
Moore, Terry Allen, Butch Hancock, and Alejandro Escovedo, as well as many
others. Proceeds go to the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
While the album features such political treatises as Eliza Gilkyson’s
“Highway 9” and Terry Allen’s rollicking and humorous “Big Ol’ White Boys,”
the most profound contributions are the more personal tracks -- “Dear Old
Friend” by Patty Griffin and “Brand New Day” by Bukka Allen -- both of which
entwine soft piano and cello music with an air of profound sadness and
longing. Equally resonant are more irate tracks filled with anger and pain,
most notably “Things We Carried” by Ian Moore -- a full-throttle rocker with
poetic lyrics and screaming guitar riffs matched by Moore’s thunderous
baritone. The record ends with Screen Door Music performing “Cycles,” a
tender instrumental piece imbued with touches of sadness and hope.
With its distinctive blend of voices and styles that transcends musical
genres, 13 Ways to Live is a sheer avant-garde masterpiece. It
poetically and profoundly encapsulates common elements of the human
experience in wartime or in peace: anger and empathy, love and longing,
politics and humanitarianism, and loss and hope.
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