Cowboy in Sweden

From the Label
Free to ramble in the heady post-"Boots" days, a newly minted Lee Hazlewood traveled abroad, ultimately landing in Sweden, a locale which would inspire some of his strongest work. His key artistic associate in Sweden was the film director Torbjrn Axelman, and together the two masterminded the film and album project Cowboy In Sweden. The album went gold in Sweden, and was the first of several acclaimed Hazlewood/Axelman collaborations.

Two talented female vocalists are a big part of Cowboy's sound. Nina Lizell and Suzi Jane Hokom bring heavenly voices and unique approaches to Hazlewood material which would have been way too sophisticated, in its humour as much as its subject matter, for mainstream pop audiences. Hokom was a successful, gender-gap smashing producer in her own right, her credits including the one and only album by the International Submarine Band, fronted by a young Gram Parsons, on Lee's LHI label. Lizell has maintained a successful singing career, performing throughout Scandinavia and Europe to this day.

The music on this album is prime Hazlewood: a singular synthesis of cowboy rambles, rockabilly rhythms and symphonic pop. His dark, poetic lyrics intertwine hard luck tales, pragmatic politics and love odes. Peppered with esoteric images and declaimed with wit, irony and wry honesty, they prefigure the self-conscious/self-referencing mania of successive generations of lyricists.

Tracks like the almost whispered anti-war meditation "No Train To Stockholm", the Bacharachian coyness of "Hey Cowboy" and the honky-tonk-meets-strings of "Pray Them Bars Away" display his utterly unique muse in full splendor. An ideal entre into the Hazlewood oeuvre.

Tracks:

Pray Them Bars Away
Leather & Lace
Forget Marie
Cold Hard Times
The Night Before
Hey Cowboy
No Train To Stokholm
For A Day Like Today
Easy Nad Me
What's More I Don't Need Her
Vem Kan Segla

Customer Reviews:

One of Hazlewood's signature albums, and sadly out of print now...........2007-02-03

This is another great album from the Hazlewood cannon. It was the soundtrack to a TV special that he did roughly around 1969 or so. I would love to see a remastered DVD of Cowboy in Sweden. Nowadays, it seems everything is coming out on DVD (including some of the worst stuff known to man), so it would be sweet if Cowboy was released. The album is very good, despite the remastering job. Like someone else had written, there are a lot of pops and hisses here, which means vinyl was used instead of the original master tapes. Still, the album is very good, with some of Hazlewood's most moving compositions ever (and with him, that's saying something). The song For a Day Like Today is so beautiful and heartbreaking. It's probably my favorite Hazlewood song. Every Lee album I've gotten has been magnificent, and this one is no exception.

yep, it's the packaging and sound............2004-04-19

On closer listening I realised this release of Cowboy In Sweden was mastered from very worn vinyl, which is a shame because the actual recording and mixing is very atmospheric. Still, the scratchy, muddy sound adds its own texture in an era of pristine digital reproduction...
This album was apparently hastily compiled from a number of different sources, which accounts for the number of different singers (where did Suzi Jane Hokom come from? and go to?) and Swedish/non-Swedish material. Whatever, it's classic stuff, but Smells Like Records could have done a better job with the sound and annotation. If there's no other way of getting this album it's an essential buy.

Arcane Treasure.......2004-03-16

A classic album, slightly cheapened by the shoddy packaging and sound quality. The sound is very muddy and wobbly, as if mastered from very worn tapes. The booklet features several black and white snaps, some LARGE PRINT bios and recording details, and a weird preface by Lee. Essential.

Psychedelic Country.......2003-09-29

the above title is what comes to mind when i first heard this gem of an album. lee is a great songwriter. this is maybe his best album (don't know haven't heard them all yet. but this would be hard to top). the production on here is tops. the sound is great. it's some great mellow stuff. What's More I Don't Need Her is a really beautiful track. everything on here is great. other favorites are forget marie & easy and me. the album is really lovely stuff.

on a very unusual side note: my main man beck (the loser guy) played some lee on a kcrw radio broadcast where he got pick out some songs he wanted to play. he played If It's Monday Morning. but really raved on about this album. now that i've heard it i can see why.

A Country-Pop Smorgasbord.......2003-04-29

As I develop a belated appreciation for the talents of Lee Hazlewood, I have been picking up CDs of his earlier work one at a time. Cowboy In Sweden is one such recent acquisition. It offers the listener a smorgasbord of country-pop songs written for a Swedish TV show of the same name as this CD. Several of them should have attained the status of classics.
The whole CD is listenable and enjoyable despite the cutesy lyrics of Hey Cowboy and the sort of out of place anti-war sentiments (in a cowboy show?) of No Train To Stockholm. And it might be seen as merely pleasant but ordinary except for the presence of three great songs, two of which were penned by Hazlewood.
One of the best is a very humorous and very country prison song, Pray Them Bars Away. Hazlewood's wry sense of humor really comes through again and again. The closing song, Vem Kan Segla, is a haunting love song featuring Nina Lizell's Swedish vocals swirling around Hazlewood's baritone spoken translation in English. The best song is The Night Before, a stunning and mournful tale of sad emptiness after a one-night stand, with Hazlewood's regret-filled vocals interspersed with background organ and a short, yet powerful brass interlude.
Cowboy In Sweden is one of the best Hazlewood CDs I've heard thus far. If you are already a confirmed fan or are merely Hazlewood-curious, you can't go wrong with this.

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