- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The reclines started out as a Patsy Cline tribute band, but the reclines outgrew being a tribute band as quickly as k.d. lang escaped the “country music” label.
k.d. lang and the reclines – Angel with a Lariat (1987): I try to call people what they want to be called, and Canadian superstar k.d. lang (birth name: Kathryn Dawn Lang) prefers her name to be shown all in lower case. I guess she wants her band name shown that way as well, or at least it is also spelled without capital letters on the front cover of their first major-label release (and second album overall), Angel with a Lariat. With her pixie hairdo and androgynous appearance, I think it was pretty clear from the beginning that k.d. lang is part of what is now called the LGBTQ community. I consider k.d. lang as being “alt-country”, though that term actually came along several years later; after all, you cannot get much more “alt” than being lesbian/gay-identified in a traditional music genre like country music.
She officially “came out” in an interview published in the national LGBTQ magazine The Advocate shortly before the release of k.d. lang’s first adult-contemporary album Ingénue (1992). The reclines started out as a Patsy Cline tribute band (hence the name) and included a small photograph of Cline on the cover of their debut album A Truly Western Experience (1984), but the reclines outgrew the confines of the tribute band world about as quickly as k.d. lang escaped the “country music” label: Like Lyle Lovett who came along at about the same time (and Patsy Cline as well for that matter), k.d. lang has too much variety in her music to be limited to any one musical category. Patsy Cline is an early female country and western music star who is widely regarded as being one of the finest country artists of all time. Cline is also one of the first country musicians who made several successful crossovers to the pop charts. Today, Patsy Cline is probably best known for her cover of the early Willie Nelson song “Crazy” (1962), although she had several other crossover hits, such as “Walkin’ After Midnight” (1957) and “I Fall to Pieces” (1961), her first #1 country hit. Patsy Cline was in a serious auto accident in 1961 and then died at age 30 in a small airplane crash that also took the lives of two other country music artists, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins on March 5, 1963 – the tragedy is analogous to the airplane crash with three early rock and roll stars, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens on February 3, 1959, which has become known as “the day the music died”. Angel with a Lariat has a big and vivacious sound and must have been a joy to record. I guess you could consider it to be a country album, although there are clear rock and rockabilly influences as well. The album’s producer is Welsh musician Dave Edmunds, who is mostly identified with the new wave and pub rock genres. Most of the songs were written by the bandmembers, not all by k.d. lang herself; and the album includes fine covers of a Patsy Cline recording “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray” and also the Lynn Anderson classic “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden” that was written by Joe South.