Rhino / Wea
2006
Reintarnation
About This Album
Sire/Rhino's 2006 Reintarnation, k.d. lang's first-ever compilation, chronicles her time as a country singer, which occupies not quite as much space in her career as you might think. She made her mark in the late '80s as a maverick country singer, not quite part of the West Coast cowpunk movement, but certainly not part of the Nashville establishment, which always treated her coldly, even before she publicly came out of the closet in 1992. Listening to Reintarnation, it's not hard to see why she was not revered by the Music City: lang never strayed from camp, or as she calls it in the liner notes, "performance art," which meant that there was a certain amount of ironic distance in her music even when it sounded on the surface like pure country. That stylized detachment, delivered with a wink and a nod and a nudge, certainly helped her build an audience among '80s college rock fans, who had already embraced cowpunk, roots rock, and several of the edgy new traditionalists who emerged halfway through the decade. Lang was the closest to the latter group: musically, she wasn't all that far removed from the likes of Dwight Yoakam, and lang's tweaking of country conventions also seemed to be a kindred spirit to Lyle Lovett's dry wit.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,12,13,15,16,18,19 and 20)

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