Red House
2005
Paradise Hotel
About This Album
On her last album, 2004's Land of Milk and Honey, Eliza Gilkyson, long based in Austin, TX, made some of her most explicitly political statements and, for her trouble, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album, as well, it seems, as critical email from some of her fans. (Like Natalie Maines of Dixie Chicks, Gilkyson seemed ashamed that the President of the U.S. was from Texas, and while she acknowledged the criticism on her Website, www.elizagilkyson.com and <http://www.elizagilkyson.com/>, she also made a point of noting that 57,288,974 Americans, at the very least -- the number of people who voted for Senator John Kerry for President in 2004 -- were on her side.) If Land of Milk and Honey was her pre-election treatise, Paradise Hotel is, inevitably, her post-election lament, one she sings in a mature, smoky voice that is occasionally reminiscent of Emmylou Harris, three years her senior, and often of Lucinda Williams, three years her junior. True, the only explicitly political song on the album is "Man of God," an unsparing condemnation of George W. Bush that denies his claim to religious justification for his foreign and domestic policies. ("Jesus said help the poor and the weak/If he lived today he'd be a liberal freak.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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