The Executioner's Last Songs - The Pine Valley Cosmonauts

 

Our pal, Rob, duped this set for us, thinking that we might be able to use something in the Devil's Duo, and there are certainly plenty of apt cuts for us here! The Cosmonauts are a loose collective that sports some reasonably big names and in this case they are performing "songs of murder, mob-law, and cruel, cruel punishment", mostly acoustic-based, with an emphasis on country and bluegrass-oriented tunes as a benefit for The Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project.

Frankly, I'm not familiar with all of the artists featured here, but everyone does a fine job on their chosen numbers, with great playin'n'singin' throughout. Pretty much everything here is damn good, with highlights including fairly trad takes on "Knoxville Girl" (Brett Sparks), Rosie Flores sounding super as usual on "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive", a fun bluegrass version of "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" (Dean Schlabowske), Steve Earle's noisy "Tom Dooley", Edith Frost singin' sweetly on "Sing Me Back Home", Diane Izzo's impressive'n'expressive on "Oh Death", Jon Landford and Sally Timms doing a fab duet on "The Plans We Made", and Landford does a nice treatment on "Judgement Day" with Johnny Dowd, among plenty of others.

Fans of country, bluegrass, murder ballads and the like will certainly dig this one. I already ordered Volumes 2 and 3!