Dust, Rust, Ghosts, Highways, and Whiskey

(from Left to right)
Iron and Wine - The Creek Drank the Cradle
Bruce Springsteen - Devils & Dust
Sam Roberts - We Were Born in a Flame
Woody Guthrie - Dust Bowl Ballads
Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts of the Great Highway
Tanya Donnelly - Whiskey Tango Ghosts
Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams
Ben Harper - Diamonds on the Inside
Kathleen Edwards - Failer

Recognize any patterns? I really like a couple of these albums.
Especially the Iron and Wine and the Sun Kil Moon. They would probably be labeled in a genre called "Indie." To be honest I'm not sure if it means Indie-pendent, or Indie-ana, or what...but it's a trend that really has been taking over the last 4 years or something (and people more progressive than me probably realize it's already dead.) Generally acoustic, a hint of country, sung by someone who has a "old-soul" but in a young good looking body (a.k.a Jack Harper...or was it Ben Johnson?) This is no coincidence, these Steinbeck inspired portraits of the west, romanticized by the RIAA into money making properties is a trend that seems to be working nicely. Is this good or bad? Who am I to say, I like a lot of the music that would fall headlong into tons of these clichés. Beauty lies in the eye of the et-cetera, et-cetera. What I do know is this is real. Maybe they can sell us music easier if we believe that it isn't a gimmick, if we see it as being truth, as being art. Maybe we relate to the pain and struggle of the "west", and the poetry of "The Grapes of Wrath", the films of Terrence Malick, old sepia toned images of yesterday's past. Not criticism, merely commentary.