Showing posts with label eli young band. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eli young band. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 27, 2019 (VIDEO)


Kind of crappy episode here, to be honest - not a lot to really be said with these, unfortunately. 

Now time to tidy up some old business before I get to the eight (!!!) albums I want to talk about all dropping this Friday, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - april 27, 2019

I get the funny feeling that a lot of folks are going to forget this week pretty quickly, the sort of Billboard BREAKDOWN probably more notable for what's not happening than what is. No album bomb, no significant chart shakeups that seem like they're going to last - and yes, I know for some either the BTS arrival or Lil Uzi Vert's continued attempts to get something to stick will contradict me, but while I've been wrong predicting what will last, I get the feeling I'm not going to be that wrong with this one.

Monday, March 10, 2014

video review: '10,000 towns' by the eli young band


Can't help but feel a little disappointed with this album, it should have been better. Eh, it happens.

Next up... oh, Young Money. Lovely.

album review: '10,000 towns' by the eli young band

So here's one of the frustrating things about mainstream country artists: since so many of them have songs written by other songwriters entirely, it can distort your mental picture of an act's identity. That tends to be a complaint at the root of a lot of critics' issues with bro-country: when so many of the songwriters come from the same camp and write for many different artists, acts that should have a distinctive voice begin to blur together.

But rarely has there been a case where my view of an act has been so sharply divided as when I'm talking about the Eli Young Band. They were around in the country underground as early as the mid-2000s, but they exploded into mainstream popularity in 2011 with Life At Best. And considering I was only following country radio and less distinctive albums around that period, I was perplexed that the Eli Young Band could have such a variance in quality, as 'Even If It Breaks Your Heart' was close to one of my favourite hit songs of 2012 and 'Crazy Girl' would have had a shot at being one of the worst. 

So in preparation for this review, I went back and listened through Life At Best, and surprise surprise, both songs were written by different songwriters - and neither were members of the Eli Young Band. 'Crazy Girl' was written by Lee Brice, one of the most meat-headed and devoid-of-insight songwriters working in bro-country right now, while 'Even If It Breaks Your Heart' was written by Eric Paslay, who I reviewed a month or so back and whose debut album is only getting better every time I listen to it. But even with that, I didn't have a picture of how the Eli Young Band represented themselves, so I went deeper and...

Well, they aren't bad, but they didn't really stand out much for me. I liked the heavier guitars, the good lyrical flow, and the melancholy elements that were well-characterized and smartly delivered, but between the sloppy and often flat production and the strange dreariness that bogged down and homogenized parts of the album, I wouldn't call it a great record. And thus, I didn't know what to expect when I took a look at their newest album 10,000 Towns. They had about the same number of songwriting credits, but initial buzz suggested it had a bit of a lighter tone. So, how did it go?