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Hazlewood RebootedLost treasures from the psychedelic cowboy whom rock snobs love to love.

By Jody Rosen
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008, at 4:31 PM ET

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That big, resonant sound is all over Strung Out on Something New. You hear it on the selections from Hazlewood's Friday's Child (1965)—one of his more straightforward country and western albums—and on the several songs he produced for other artists featured on the box set, including singles by Eddy, Sanford Clark, Deana Martin, and Jack Nitzsche. (Nitzsche's "Zapata" is a minor landmark of Tex-Mex pop.) The sonic standouts, though, are the selections from Love and Other Crimes (1968), a nearly perfect fusion of easy listening balladeering, and psychedelia, with Hazlewood's reverb-swaddled vocals booming above almost comically lush string orchestrations. The title track, one of Hazlewood's great concoctions, boosts an upright bass in the mix to perform a pas de deux with the singer's burring vocal—a low, lonesome sound. And then there's "Rainbow Woman," with woodwinds swirling atop an insistent backbeat as Hazlewood croons a cryptic chorus: "Rainbow woman rainbow/ Rainbow woman woman/ Rainbow woman!" It's either one of the great pieces of pseudo-spiritual late '60s doggerel or a perfect parody thereof.

In fact, it's probably a little of each. On the recordings from his late '60s/early '70s heyday, Hazlewood is impossible to pin down. He inhabits a place between genres and generations—it was the superhero of the musical old guard, Frank Sinatra, who hired Hazlewood to give Nancy's career a kickstart—and his music mixed affection for and ironic distance from both rock and prerock pop. He was, in short, one of the first full-fledged pop post-modernists. (Little wonder he's a favorite of Beck.) Hazlewood's genius was to unswervingly walk the line between sincerity and smarm, without toppling over onto either side, a feat that gives his records their richly unsettling quality. You don't have to choose funny, satirical Hazlewood or brooding, existentialist Hazlewood—the point is to soak up both and revel in the cognitive dissonances. "First Street Blues" is a great example of the Hazlewoodian uncanny. If you follow the spoken intro, it's clear that song is being sung in the voice of a drunken dragon. But the melody has a lovely lilt, and the pathos of the lyric is undeniable: "Every little grape calls my name/ As it climbs on the fire/ And makes the fire burn higher/ Higher than it's ever been/ Time and space mean nothing then."

In 2006, Hazlewood released his valedictory album, Cake or Death, recorded while he was dying of renal cancer. On that final record's final song, "T.O.M. (The Old Man)," Hazlewood actually doffed his mask, staring down death, for once, without a big sidelong wink. "Have you seen the mountains?/ They still hug the snow," Hazlewood sang. "And have you seen the old man?/ He's ready to go." This moment of pure emotional nakedness was touching but jarringly un-Hazlewood-like. Strung Out on Something New gives us the familiar, irresistible Hazlewood: singing in a voice swamped in reverb, with an audible twinkle in his eye, and his tongue in cheek.

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Jody Rosen is Slate's music critic. He lives in New York City. He can be reached at .
Photograph of Lee Hazlewood © 2003-2008 MySpace.com. All rights reserved.
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