John Hartford - Iron Mountain Depot (2021)

Hartford's final RCA album was a little less inspired than much of his prior work for the label. It's not much different than his previous work for the company in the late '60s. It's just not as abundant in left-field ideas and sounds a little more casual and tossed-off. That stated, it's still among the goofiest, normal-save-constant-sly-winking country-pop ever made. The singer/songwriter remained seemingly unable to resist coating his attractive, easygoing tunes with dry humor that almost leaves the impression he was trying to self-sabotage any chance he had of selling a lot of records to the mainstream. Could he, or anyone, have expected a cry-in-the-beer-like lament called "Before They Tow My Car Away" to be perceived otherwise? Likewise the closing instrumental cover of "Hey Jude," which rambles on for seven minutes as a bluegrass banjo gets elbowed aside by percussive mouth noises and the tempo corkscrews into chaotic near-anarchy, almost as if Hartford were trying to trample his commercial crossover potential into submission once and far all. Most of the album's actually more normal "Go Home Girl" is one of his better pop melodies and some cuts, such as "Like Unto a Mockingbird" and the admirably verbose "Natural to Be Gone," are dressed up with the kind of pop orchestration that figured strongly into much of Hartford's RCA work. Overall, though, it has a slightly more rootsy feel than the prior RCA albums, perhaps as an indicator to the folkier approach he'd use after leaving the label.