ALBUM REVIEW: Queer Country Pioneers Lavender Country Return With ‘Blackberry Rose’

The world of country music wasn’t ready for Patrick Haggerty and his crew of Marxist queers back in 1973. Then, Lavender Country’s strident sexual politics and their self-titled debut LP failed to reach an audience beyond more progressive elements of the gay community. But the project’s fortunes shifted when the record was rediscovered by the ever-dependable Paradise of Bachelors imprint, which reissued Lavender Country in 2014. Finally, those of less blinkered persuasions could catch the militant message behind outstanding anti-anthems such as “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears.”

Buoyed by their newfound success, which has seen them repositioned as progenitors of a contemporary queer country movement, Haggerty and his ever-revolving troupe return with Blackberry Rose. Full of tunes written around the same time as those on Lavender Country, it’s as if those intervening decades never happened. The flame of defiance still flickers and Haggerty, now well into his 70s, has apparently stumbled upon the elixir of eternal youth, his nasal whine remaining full of punkish pep.

Yet there is change. The overriding and understandable focus on gay issues has tilted toward a broader social compass, with women’s rights positioned further to the fore. Several cuts here find Haggerty relinquishing the mic to female guests: Tami Allen is the epitome of domesticated drudgery on doleful gutbucket-pluck “Lament of a Wyoming Housewife” and the spoof on “Stand By Your Man” finds Nikki Grossman defiantly proclaiming in her tradition-subverting twang, “Stand on your man / Give him a boot heel to lick on / Or he will piss you off real quick / And turn into a prick on steroids.” When Haggerty lends his voice to the cause it’s to admonish cheating husbands or pay tribute to political activist Clara Fraser.

It’s not all gravy. The stodgy “Gay Bar Blues” languishes in a repetitively hoary chord progression and “Sweet Shadow Man” is a muddled quasi-cartoonish Cajun misfire. But, for the most part, Blackberry Rose is a gratifying homecoming, boasting some glorious cuts. Resuscitated from the debut, “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You” is as marvelous as ever and artfully infectious like the best tunes by fellow outsiders Michael Hurley and Terry Allen. And then there’s the drowsy honky-tonk drawl of “Don’t Buy Her No More Roses,” a pithy conjuration of yet another relationship seemingly on the rocks before a sweet softening in the closing refrain, “She don’t want your sick ass roses / She wants you.”

It’s a line that encapsulates the oddball magic of Lavender Country, where die-hard polemics nestle snugly alongside a deeply romantic, humanist take on the world.