video review: 'sound & color' by alabama shakes

Well, this took way too long to get out.

Next up, another record I missed a few months ago that also got nominated for a fair few Grammys, so stay tuned!

album review: 'sound & color' by alabama shakes

You know, for as much as I say I like blues rock, I don't really cover a lot of it. And for the past few weeks I've been wondering why and I think my answer is that I've got a very specific type of blues rock I enjoy. Dark, moody but with strong hooks, dirty production but not so fuzzed out and lo-fi that you lose the deeper textures, a solid sense of groove, and writing that can rise above some of the unfortunate cliches of the genre. And when you hold so much of it to a high standard like that, you tend to find a lot of bands don't really hold up as well as you'd like.

Take, for instance, Alabama Shakes - although, yes, you could definitely make the argument they're more soul than blues rock, which the band is always canny to sidestep. Now I was planning on covering Sound & Color months ago - the critical reviews were suggesting it was a great record from an upstart act with one hell of a frontwoman in Brittany Howard. But when I dug up their debut album... well, it wasn't that it was bad but I was definitely underwhelmed. Part of this was production that really could have afforded to give them a little more texture and crunch, part of it was writing I didn't think was all that stellar, and part of it was compositions that frankly weren't pushing anything. It was a reasonably solid release and again, Brittany Howard can sing her ass off, but I wouldn't go any further than that.

So fast-forward to now, and Alabama Shakes' sophomore debut has apparently won so much critical acclaim it's up for a Grammy. Now it's not going to win that Grammy - all the signs speak to either Kendrick Lamar or Taylor Swift winning for Album of the Year - but it was enough to think that maybe I hadn't given this band a fair shake. So I decided to dig up Sound & Color and try again - what did we get?

video review: 'mr. misunderstood' by eric church

Well damn, I didn't expect this to be nearly as good as it was. Not complaining at all - it's a nice feeling for Eric Church to be on track again, and it's good to put one of my most contentious reviews to the back of my mind for now.

But next up... oh boy, that Logic album is tempting. So let's go for it, stay tuned!

album review: 'mr. misunderstood' by eric church

You know, I've been asked a few times what I think are my worst reviews, or any that I regret. And here's the thing: over the course of nearly doing 500 of these things, you're going to encounter reviews where you look back and just wince a bit - maybe a bad turn of phrase, maybe a slip of the tongue or error in song interpretation, or maybe just an album that has grown or cooled on you over time that makes your review not reflect your feelings now. Now here's the thing: that happens. It's only human for opinions to evolve over time with more information or with changing emotions or even just the passage of time, and reviews being a snapshot of how one feels at a specific moments only further highlights how subjective they really are.

And as such, when you pair all of those factors with an album designed to court controversy with a major shift in artistic direction... well, those are the reviews that tend to spark the most vitriolic reactions... which takes us to Eric Church. I'll wholeheartedly admit my review of his 2014 album The Outsiders is not my best, and when combined with an album that showed Eric Church trying to bend country music in so many different directions, you got a mess all around. It didn't help matters that Eric Church is a contentious artist, drawing on tropes of outlaw country and some interesting songwriting ideas but playing them with little subtlety in the writing or instrumentation. Granted, if I were to reflect on the biggest miscalculation of The Outsiders, it'd be the overwrought, leaden production, courtesy of perennial frustrating producer Jay Joyce.

And as such, when I heard the two had teamed up again to deliver a surprise album of all things, delivered first to registered members of his fan club with ten new tracks not even cracking forty minutes... well, I wasn't sure what to expect. When you consider the record was cut just a few months back and slipped out as a complete surprise, you could either view this is Eric Church satiating his fans with something quick, or him attempting to pull a Beyonce, which he might have been able to do if it wasn't for Chris Stapleton's huge CMA success launching his sales into the stratosphere. But I already reviewed Stapleton's Traveller months ago, so what do we get with Mr. Misunderstood?

album review: 'traveller' by chris stapleton

I've talked a little before about songwriters working as part of the Nashville machine occasionally feel the desire to strike out and find the spotlight for themselves. They churn out dozens if not hundreds of songs for other acts, perhaps giving them a certain artistic touch or just flavourless mush, but more often than not it often serves as a sort of boot camp for aspiring artists. They start off writing for more successful acts until they can have enough clout to do it on their own.

And what's startling about Chris Stapleton is that it took so damn long. For those of you who don't read the liner notes or Wikipedia, Stapleton has been a country songwriter for acts as varied as Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Luke Bryan, Darius Rucker, and even Adele. What most people don't know is that he's also chugged away in smaller bluegrass and southern rock acts over the past few years, which were never huge commercial successes but gave him outlets to explore and refine his craft and live presence further. But now he's finally dropping a debut country record at the age of thirty-seven, and with the waves of critical acclaim coming in, this looked to be a record I had to cover, because believe it or not, he actually cowrote 'Whiskey & You', the Jason Eady cover of a Tim McGraw song I actually placed on my year end list of the best songs of 2014. And sure, there was the possibility that other, less-interesting, more mainstream approachable songs might fill this album, but if he could write something with that sort of punch, who knows what he was saving for his own material? So I dug into that debut Traveller - what did we get?

video review: 'holding all the roses' by blackberry smoke

Well, that turned out pretty damn great. Think I need to get to some more country soon...

So yeah, I'll be covering the new Mavericks record, but first... hmm, not sure yet. Need a bit more time before Big Sean, so I might take care of some old business first. Stay tuned!

album review: 'holding all the roses' by blackberry smoke

You know, I don't tend to talk much about southern rock - and really, I'm a little surprised at that myself. Inspired by blues, country, and hard rock - three genres I do really like, it was most prevalent in the 70s from the country rock scene originally driven by the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd and from there it's been around for decades in scattered that do accrue a fair amount of popularity, spanning Tom Petty to Kid Rock to the genesis of sludge metal. As such, it falls into a bit of a weird niche, typically landing on classic rock radio or some of the harder country stations, never quite reaching the peaks of the 70s beyond scattered success from a few acts. You could almost argue that it's gone underground, but it's less that and more that like other genres such as bluegrass or grunge or some offshoots of punk, it's just not as popular as it was and ends up catering to smaller, cult fanbases.

That's not saying that there aren't some southern rock bands that are worth following. Case in point, Georgia band Blackberry Smoke. Affiliated with acts like the Zac Brown Band and Eric Church, if you're looking for an act that would define modern southern rock - a distinctive country twang matched with groove-heavy hard rock - Blackberry Smoke would be that band. And for the most part, they were a pretty damn solid band - the melodies were prominent, the guitar solos were great, Charlie Starr's vocals had real flavour, and with every record, the songwriting was steadily getting more nuanced and distinctive. If I were to pinpoint an early weakness on those first few albums, it'd probably be in some of the lyrics - not that they were bad for the genre, but that some of their material began to run together a bit. And like most hard rock, sometimes the sleaze could get a little obnoxious.

But their 2012 album The Whipporwill was their best yet, and I was curious to check out their 2015 record Holding All The Roses, especially when it managed to top the country album charts last week. And sure, country's been slow thus far this year, but to think that the album had enough coming from an independent label without a huge single tearing up the radio was promising, especially considering the album has notched some solid critical acclaim. So I checked it out - how is it?

video review: 'peace, love, and country music' by ronnie dunn

Well, this has been in my backlog way too long. Glad to finally get a chance to talk about it, especially considering it turned out to be an interesting, if not exactly workable album.

Okay, next up will either be Ought or Frankmusik, because I need a little more time to cover Lykke Li, Epica, and (UGH) Lily Allen. Stay tuned!

album review: 'peace, love, and country music' by ronnie dunn

My very first concert was a Brooks & Dunn concert.

I don't remember much of it - I remember Lonestar opened for them and did a pretty solid job, and that Brooks & Dunn really had a lot of flashy fireworks in their show - but the duo left on an impression on me growing up. When I was listening to 90s country, I listened to a lot of Brooks & Dunn, and looking back on them now, I'm not surprised why they did so well. Kix Brooks had the smoother tones to bring in a more pop audience, and Ronnie Dunn had the rougher, more 'country' vocals to appeal to mainstream country fans. 

That said, as much great line-dancing music as they made, they were never critical darlings, mostly because they weren't exactly deep songwriters before they subsumed to the Nashville songwriting machine. And as much as I like the band for making some 90s country standards, you didn't go to Brooks & Dunn for depth in mainstream country, you had Alan Jackson and George Strait for that. And thus, when Brooks & Dunn split up after two decades of music, I wasn't that fazed. 

What did interest me was Ronnie Dunn's continued solo career, which he kicked off in 2011 with a self-titled album and is most remembered by me with 'Cost Of Livin'', a brutally tragic song about the continued recession across the United States, especially in rural states and small towns. It was a daring move for a second single, and what makes the song so powerful is that it doesn't present a solution or a message that it's all going to be okay. That song, combined with some vitriolic remarks against the evolving state of modern country, did have me curious about his newest album, albeit with a certain degree of caution. After all, I appreciate steps in a more mature or deep direction, but I'm also aware those comments can be used to placate country music press concerned with authenticity from examining your material. So, what does Ronnie Dunn deliver?