New West Records
2008
Ready For The Flood
About This Album
During the brief moment in the 1990s when it looked like alt-country might break through to the mass audience, the Jayhawks seemed like a sure thing for stardom with their beautiful, evocative melodies and stellar guitar work, and the superb songwriting and harmonies of Mark Olson and Gary Louris. The Jayhawks' first two major-label albums, 1992's Hollywood Town Hall and 1995's Tomorrow the Green Grass, were shining examples of what was good about the new wave of country-rock, and when Louris left the band in late 1995, even though they continued to make fine music, for many fans they were never quite the same, as if the Jayhawks' greatest promise went unfulfilled. For alt-country loyalists, the prospect of Mark Olson and Gary Louris working together again seems a bit like a reunion of Lennon and McCartney or Simon & Garfunkel, so it's well worth pointing out that Ready for the Flood, Olson and Louris' first recording together since Tomorrow the Green Grass and first ever as a duo, is not a Jayhawks album. The duo's harmonies are as lovely as ever, but though there was a widescreen grandeur to the Jayhawks' best work, Ready for the Flood is a purposefully modest album, with the emphasis on acoustic instruments, unobtrusive arrangements, and songs that tell small stories with a rich but elliptical sense of detail.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and 11)

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