Ry Cooder's Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down: lefty rootsy blues, rock and country for our times

Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down, the latest album from blues/roots legend Ry Cooder, impressario of the Buena Vista Social Club, is an unabashedly left-wing album in the tradition of the great titles of Woody Guthrie and Haywire Harry McClintlock. Built around the single "Quicksand," released in 2010 in response to Arizona's anti-immigrant bill SB 1070, the songs here are a combination of Mexican-style corridos, stomping blues, shitkicking C&W tracks, and other forms of great American music, tackling such themes as financial corruption, immigration, the plight of migrant workers, the double sorrow of dying for a war based on a lie, and other outrages of the modern age.

As you'd expect from Cooder, the songs are musically tight and eminently singable and danceable -- and the lyrics are clever and funny when they're not enraging and invigorating.

• [Clemoh]

  If I die of Vanity, promise me, promise me

  They bury me some place I don’t want to be

  You’ll dig me up and transport me

  Unceremoniously away from the swollen city breeze, garbage bag trees

  Whispers of disease, and acts of enormity

  And lower me slowly, sadly, and properly

  Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy

• [Iain Marcks]

  Spotify’d.

• [s2redux]

  Hmm…Ry Cooder — “either contains a rude double-entendre or is a relic of an era of unbelievable naiveté.”

  Hey, this is fun!

  • [scifijazznik]

    I like to think of it as both/all as opposed to either/or. 

    Ry Cooder is a mythological creature.  A musician’s musician who works nonstop and hones his craft over decades far away from the glare of the mainstream’s spotlight.  Dude played with Beefheart and the Stones.  He should have won a Noble Prize for what he did with the Buena Vista Social Club.  If you haven’t heard his records with Ali Farka Toure and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and dig Cooder’s style of world fusion, do yourself a favor and check them out.  Glad to see Ry Cooder on boingboing.

    • [Phil Norman]

      Seriously — his record with V.M.Bhatt, “A Meeting by the River,” is mesmerizing and transcendent.  I still remember where I was the first time I heard it.

      • [scifijazznik]

        I was lucky enough to see V.M. Bhatt live about 10 years ago.  To this day it remains one of the most amazing concerts I’ve ever seen.  No laser light shows, no pyrotechnics, no scantily-clad choreographed dancers, no pharmacological enhancements.  Just a dude sitting on a carpet with a guitar in his lap and a tabla player next to him.  My consciousness supernovaed.

• [Iain Marcks]

  he also wrote the music for Wim Wender’s “Paris, Texas”, and Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders”, “Crossroads”, “Southern Comfort”, and contributed some bad-ass tracks to “Streets of Fire”.

  and he wrote a song about a meatball. love this guy.

  • [Jan_Willem]

    Actually, One Meatball is a much-covered Louis Singer/Hy Zaret tune. Over here in Holland, my own band, De Marginalen, continues to cover it.

• [ill lich]

  Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live?

  • [OgilvyTheAstronomer]

    Thanks, I had only heard Springsteen’s cover of it before. Loving the original.

• [Teller]

  Sounds like a continuation of Ry’s recent album on the displacement of the Hispanics in Chavez Ravine for Dodger Stadium. He is guitarist’s guitarist and a sponge for the world’s music. His work with Flaco Jimenez is still among my favorites. Just the best.

• [Paul Renault]

  People should get down on their knees,  at least once a week, and thank FSM that people like Ry Cooder exist.

• [Stephen E. Cox]

  In the spirit of the politics of the album, how about a purchase link to somewhere that doesn’t dodge taxes and abuse employees?