Steve Earle
I Feel Alright (1996)

review by: Brandon Copple
Date: 1/10/01

I Feel Alright is the second album Steve Earle made after getting out of prison, kicking heroin and, by the looks of the liner pics, gaining about a thousand pounds. Unlike Elvis, however, porking up did not coincide with Steve Earle's musical demise. I Feel Alright remains, by my reckoning, the best thing he's done since going straight. It is angry, dark, desparate, fatalistic, defiant. And it rocks. The album opens with an ominous guitar lick followed by this proclamation: "Now some of you would live through me then lock me up and throw away the key, or find a place to hide away and hope that I'll just go away – HUH." That HUH sets the tone: Steve ain't fuckin' around.

You might have to look in the Country section for this record, but don't fret, Manhattanites-no steel guitars or weepy waltzes here. Instead of hopping up on a barstool and crying in his beer, Steve leads you down through the dark tunnels of addiction, where "Heroin's the only thing, the only gift the darkness brings."

I am a lyrics man, and I like Steve Earle because he makes up great story songs like "Billy & Bonnie" and writes cool lines like "I took my pistol and a hundred dollar bill, had everything I need to get me killed." On the other hand, I don't know dick about music, if it sounds cool I call it good. I Feel Alright, with its relentless guitars and cracking percussion, sounds great.

Last year a slimmed-down Steve Earle won lots of praise for Transcendental Blues. That's a great album, refined and eclectic. But I like my Steve Earle a little angrier, a little scarier. If he's a little fatter, so be it.