Ry Cooder's new album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, was released yesterday, prompting David Dye, host of NPR's World Cafe, to tweet that the album "just shot to my best of list. Ry got pissed off enough to make another masterpiece." Cooder performs two sold-out shows at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, tonight and tomorrow, and is today's guest on NPR's Here & Now. The BBC calls the album "a powerful state of the nation address" that "is about as good and sustained a riposte to the grubby, grabbing times we live in as any artist has mustered, which makes it essential listening."
Ry Cooder's new album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, was released yesterday on Nonesuch / Perro Verde Records, prompting David Dye, host of NPR's World Cafe, to tweet that the album "just shot to my best of list. Ry got pissed off enough to make another masterpiece." To mark the album's release, Cooder and his 17-piece band perform two sold-out shows at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, tonight and tomorrow.
Earlier this week, Cooder appeared on Marketplace from American Public Media, which is streaming the entire album on its site. Today, he is the guest on Here & Now from NPR member station WBUR in Boston. Though others, like Uncut magazine, have compared Cooder to Woody Guthrie on the new album, Cooder tells Here & Now host Robin Young his musical inspiration for the new album goes back even further, to the work of populist 19th-century balladeer Uncle Dave Macon.
"Hearing Ry Cooder talk is like listening to a musical history lesson," says Alex Ashlock, the show's producer and director, who calls the new album "a great listen." Tune in to today's show on your local NPR station or listen in online after 2 PM ET at hereandnow.wbur.org.
Cooder also spoke with the Toronto Sun for an interview you can read at torontosun.com.
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The BBC calls Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down "essential listening." Just as Uncut calls the new record "one of his best albums ever," BBC reviewer Andy Fyfe contends that "few of his nearly 30 albums and soundtracks have been as strong as this."
The review goes on to say: "His last album, I, Flathead in 2008, told the story of beatnik salt flats racer Kash Buk, and although one theme similarly emerges from Pull Up Some Dust ..., here Cooder delivers numerous desperate, broken, bloodied and disenfranchised folk left to rot by those who put greed before humanity. Individually they are studies in blues, country, dustbowl folk and boogie, but collectively they add up to a powerful state of the nation address."
Fyfe concludes that Cooder's new album "is about as good and sustained a riposte to the grubby, grabbing times we live in as any artist has mustered, which makes it essential listening."
Read the complete review at bbc.co.uk.
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To pick up a copy of Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down on CD and pre-order the vinyl LP (due out September 13), head to the Nonesuch Store, where orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout. You can also purchase the album as MP3s and FLAC lossless files, out now.
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