The Pine Valley Cosmonauts The Executioner's Last Songs: Volume One

Jon Langford and the gang consign songs of murder, mob law, and cruel, cruel punishment to the realm of myth, memory and history. Eighteen songs that are as old as the hills (though some were written last week) in order to celebrate/mourn America’s grim fascination with the savage cycle of crime and vengeance, and to raise money and awareness for the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project.

This album has songs by the Louvin Brothers, Hank Williams, Charley Pride, Johnny Paycheck, Cole Porter, Merle Haggard, Stanley Brothers, Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, that lost country juggernaut, The Adverts, and more.

Helping the PVC out with the vocals are, as usual, a dazzling array of guest stars. Let’s see who we have here: Steve Earle, Brett Sparks of the Handsome Family, the Rockabilly Filly Rosie Flores, Deano from Dollar Store and the Wacos, Janet Bean of Freakwater, Lonesome Bob, Neko Case, Johnny Dowd, Edith Frost, Diane Izzo, Rick Sherry of Devil in a Woodpile, Sally Timms, Paul Burch, and more.

We encourage you to revel in the paradox of banishing barbarism while singing its tune. Politics aside, if most benefit/tribute records are a hodge-podge of leftovers, this is a final feast with 18 exquisite courses. A chilling, harrowing, rollicking effort from top to bottom.

These death songs are stories passed down, morphed through shifting moralities—their gallows humor and morbid eye for detail dangling them somewhere between legend and current affairs. Enjoy and make a difference.

Things got so bad in this state, the former Governor declared a blanket amnesty for all death row inmates (no, they didn't get let out—sentences commuted to life without parole AND, as a bonus, they get to rub elbows with two of Illinois' former governors!). If you would like to know about the cause, we’d like to direct you to a couple of good sources: The Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty at www.icadp.org and www.deathpenaltyinfo.org. All artists’ proceeds from this record will be donated to the above causes. Thus far, this record had raised over $80,000 for the ICADP. We can't thank you enough.

"You will be sufficiently caught up in the essential absurdity of violence, any violence, to look at it in a new light. Death Row inmates tend to be romanticized in movies and other forms of pop culture, made to lead a more heightened existence than the rest of us. The Executioner’s Last Songs does its best to put down that tired warhorse while making us kick up our heels to its tunes." —Chicago Sun-Times

"These songs aren’t handled with such reverence that all the fun gets sucked out. Rather, they feel alive, which given the theme, makes for a pretty fine protest." —CMJ