![]() Ward, peddling himself as “bi-curious, redneck indie-folk” and touring with Bon Iver. The lion’s share of And It’s Still Alright backslides to the gormless balladeering of his decade-old Rounder debut, In Memory of Loss-a record made when he was under the spell of M. Ultimately, this old folkie notion of purity triumphs over Rateliff’s composerly aspirations. Whether he’s grinding out old-school soul with the Night Sweats or flying solo, he’s obsessed with the idea of authenticity: the idea that a song isn’t a song unless it can be convincingly played alone on an acoustic guitar. If Rateliff is anything, it’s doggedly earnest. Even at his quietest moments, Nilsson favored a bit of the old razzle-dazzle: His celebrated 1970 LP Nilsson Sings Newman doubles as an interpretive masterstroke and a display of studio wizardry, where he proved his vocal virtuosity by overdubbing every harmony part. ![]() In any case, evoking the ghost of Harry Nilsson is a particularly odd move from Rateliff, since Nilsson-one of pop’s great eccentrics, who recently received a boost when his “Gotta Get Up” was featured in Natasha Lyonne’s Netflix series Russian Doll- was never exactly a paragon of sincerity. The answer is, not very Nilsson at all, not even when Rateliff takes pains to stage his own Pandemonium Shadow Show-laboring to replicate the iconic songwriter’s whimsical melodies on “All or Nothing,” or giving “Expecting to Lose” a swaying sing-song bridge. Rateliff cut the album in part to fulfill a promise to Swift, who told the songwriter, “Keep pushing for those Harry Nilsson tunes, man”-to which Rateliff responded, “Well, we’ll see how Nilsson I can get.” The twin losses inspired the singer/songwriter to record the melancholy, meditative And It’s Still Alright, an album designed to be everything a Night Sweats record is not: intimate, confessional, bittersweet. Swift died unexpectedly in 2018, the same year Rateliff divorced his wife after a “tumultuous” relationship.
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