The daughter of hillbilly singers June Carter and Carl Smith, Carlene Carter put in some time as a junior member of the Carter Family road show, but really made her mark in the New Wave era, back when she was married to rocker Nick Lowe and living the wild life in drug-infused Los Angeles showbiz scene. Carlene was famously quoted at the time as saying she wanted to "put the c**t back in country," but though she sometimes twanged it up, her early albums mostly tilted towards rock or rock-flavored country of a New Wave-ish variety. Nick Lowe's influence is very clear on these discs, which often sound like the tightly-crafted neo-billy of his band, Rockpile. Although she was something of an alt-country pioneer (or maybe because of it...) Carter's albums sold poorly, and with the dissolution of her marriage, for the better part of the 1980s she took a break from recording records. Her "comeback" in 1990 was pretty surprising: the album I Fell In Love, along with a vocal performance with the band Southern Pacific propelled her into the Country charts for the first time...
Discography
Carlene Carter "Carlene Carter" (Warner, 1978)
A straight-up rock record recorded with members of the Graham Parker's band, The Rumour...
Carlene Carter "Two Sides To Every Woman" (Warner, 1979)
And this time around she was working with the Doobie Brothers (!)
Carlene Carter "Musical Shapes" (Warner, 1980)
Her first album with husband/producer Nick Lowe...
Carlene Carter "Blue Nun" (F-Beat, 1981)
Carlene Carter "C'est C Bon" (Epic, 1983)
Carlene Carter "I Fell In Love" (Giant, 1990)
This was Carter's "comeback" album, with two highly successful hits, "I Fell In Love" and "Come On Back, which both hit #3 on the Country charts. The title track is a simply irresistible, super-bouncy country-pop number with a chorus that'll clobber ya... Other songs are less catchy, but all in all, this is a pretty nice record, and definitely more "country" than her earlier work. This was also her first album made with longtime partner Howie Klein, a seasoned rock'n'roll bass player, who had played with Tom Petty's band, and who (sadly) died in 2003 of a heroin overdose...
Carlene Carter "Little Love Letters" (Giant, 1993)
The song "Every Little Thing" hit #3 on the Country charts, apparently cementing Carter's viability as a hitmaking artist... Still, this is kind of an iffy album. There are glimmers of life -- the plunky, acoustic "Nowhere Train," the Rockpile-ish "Every Little Thing" -- but this disc suffers from muddled and oft-misguided overproduction, and a herky-jerky mishmash of styles, from syrupy ballads to smoothed-out sortabilly. Carlene's vocals often fall flat, too -- she sounds a bit too matronly for a lot of this material to work although, as I say, there are some nice songs lurking in the margins. I'm sure there are many who would consider this to be a warm and "mature" work; I just think she sounds a bit adrift.
Carlene Carter "Little Acts Of Treason" (Giant, 1997)
Best-Ofs
Carlene Carter "Hindsight 20/20" (Giant, 1996)
A very good best-of that draws on material from the breadth of her career, but sticks close to her country roots. There's plenty of fun stuff that could have been included, but for a selection of her most tuneful and twangy work, this is damn good. Worth checking out.
The daughter of hillbilly singers June Carter and Carl Smith, Carlene Carter put in some time as a junior member of the Carter Family road show, but really made her mark in the New Wave era, back when she was married to rocker Nick Lowe and living the wild life in drug-infused Los Angeles showbiz scene. Carlene was famously quoted at the time as saying she wanted to "put the c**t back in country," but though she sometimes twanged it up, her early albums mostly tilted towards rock or rock-flavored country of a New Wave-ish variety. Nick Lowe's influence is very clear on these discs, which often sound like the tightly-crafted neo-billy of his band, Rockpile. Although she was something of an alt-country pioneer (or maybe because of it...) Carter's albums sold poorly, and with the dissolution of her marriage, for the better part of the 1980s she took a break from recording records. Her "comeback" in 1990 was pretty surprising: the album I Fell In Love, along with a vocal performance with the band Southern Pacific propelled her into the Country charts for the first time...
