The Revolution Starts...Now

Good politics doesn’t necessarily make for good music. Whether or not we agree with the general thrust of liberal roots-rock agitator Steve Earle’s latest polemic, The Revolution Starts…Now, shouldn’t influence whether we think it’s a great record (we don’t, as it happens). To be fair, it’s an OK record: “Home to Houston” sets Earle’s nightmarish first-person tale of driving a truck in Basra to a country backbeat; “Rich Man’s War” does much the same thing with a dusty Texas folk ballad. Unfortunately, the spoken-word “Warrior” is a tad pretentious, and “Condi, Condi,” an ironic, lusty calypso tribute to the national security advisor, and the slogan-happy “F the CC” are just plain silly. Much like fellow lefty-folk icon Billy Bragg, Earle is more compelling writing about what he feels than what he thinks. As such, it’s the apolitical love song “I Thought You Should Know” and “The Seeker,” a personal insight into his own activism, that hit hardest.