Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down, the latest album from blues/roots legend Ry Cooder, impressario of the Buena Vista Social Club, is an unabashedly left-wing album in the tradition of the great titles of Woody Guthrie and Haywire Harry McClintlock. Built around the single "Quicksand," released in 2010 in response to Arizona's anti-immigrant bill SB 1070, the songs here are a combination of Mexican-style corridos, stomping blues, shitkicking C&W tracks, and other forms of great American music, tackling such themes as financial corruption, immigration, the plight of migrant workers, the double sorrow of dying for a war based on a lie, and other outrages of the modern age.
As you'd expect from Cooder, the songs are musically tight and eminently singable and danceable — and the lyrics are clever and funny when they're not enraging and invigorating.
