There are few vistas more amusing than that provided by the lesser-spotted American liberal as he or she tries - positively strains - to enjoy the music of the Dixie Chicks.
Four years ago, Natalie Maines, the most socially forthright of the three Chicks, told an audience in London that the band, all natives of Lubbock, Texas, were ashamed that George W Bush came from their home state. Within days the group's albums were being ostentatiously banned from country radio and blocky men with necks broader than their brains were writing songs caricaturing the girls as venomous quislings.
Maines did offer a sort of apology for her disrespectful tone, but made sure to reiterate her opposition to the president's misadventures in Iraq.
More power to her elbow. It is easy to mouth off about George Bush if you're in a hardcore punk band; to do so when your core audience contains a disproportionate number of Republicans demonstrates professional bravery. What a shame that the girls' music - occupant of that grim nowhere between rock and country - is so numbingly bland. There are, I would guess, quite a few copies of their albums, purchased by way of moral support, destined to remain forever unplayed in urban lofts.
Shut Up & Sing, a documentary from Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck, has, one supposes, been constructed to appeal to the band's new friends among the anti-war constituency. Such an audience will, most likely, get along well enough with this competent, warm-hearted film.
Featuring no voiceover and eschewing the use of musing experts, the picture begins just before that London concert and takes us through the joys and traumas of the next three years. Every every time the film appears to be drifting towards cosiness some new outrage emerges to fire the blood. The band come across as brave, amusing and impressively dogged in their resistance to compromise.
Sadly, they will insist on playing us their dreary music.
