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Album Review: Brothers Osborne–Port Saint Joe

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Rating: 8.5/10

When we think of beach music and seaside towns, the tendency is to picture touristy, sexy places–sun and sand and bikinis. But there’s another side to this also, coastal towns which remain rural and largely untouched by commercialism. There’s still that feeling you can only get from living by the sea, the way locals tend to live on “island time” and nothing moves in a hurry. But these towns are still tied to the South as well, as much attuned to Southern culture as they are to island life, giving them their own unique flavor and laid-back atmosphere. Port Saint Joe is a town like this in the Florida panhandle on the Gulf coast, and it’s there that Brothers Osborne made this record in Jay Joyce’s home studio. The result is a beach album, but one that feels weathered and familiar rather than commercial and flashy, much like those little coastal towns.

As for Jay Joyce, this is exactly the kind of album where he excels as a producer. Every song flows easily and effortlessly into the next, much like on Travis Meadows’ recent album First Cigarette, a record Joyce also had a hand in producing. It makes this all one cohesive listen, and at ten songs, everything feels like it belongs here, with no unnecessary filler. (Yes, only ten songs on a 2018 mainstream country release, it’s unheard of.) There’s a warm, weathered quality permeating the whole thing which makes it all feel like they recorded this on a beach; it puts you right in that mindset and makes you want to sit by the ocean and drink rum while listening to this album. There are a couple times when the production is too much, like the heavy-handed drums at the beginning of “Weed, Whiskey, and Willie” and the weird electronic sound at the start of “A couple Wrongs Makin’ it Alright,” but mostly, the production is this record’s greatest asset.

And it’s awesome to hear real instruments on a mainstream album–you’ll hear organs, real drums, and guitar licks from John Osborne that just make these songs come to life and separate them from so many similar songs by other artists. “Tequila Again” features some very cool mandolin, giving that song an almost Spanish vibe. “Slow Your Roll” opens with some of those great guitar licks I mentioned, and “Shoot me Straight” is allowed to go on for six glorious minutes, with an outro of guitar shredding and organ flourishes. It’s not a traditional record, but it’s organic and real, and this is what we so desperately need in modern country–actual musicians playing actual instruments and being allowed to actually have solos. That’s the refreshing thing about this record; it may be mostly a beachy, party album, but it doesn’t feel forced or clichéd in any way. It feels like the album Brothers Osborne wanted to make, with real sentiments being sung, and that’s largely due to the original, innovative instrumentation all over this project.

Lyrically, yes, it’s mostly a lighthearted affair, and the party themes run heavily through this. There are weed and alcohol references peppered all over it. The thing about this, though, is that it manages to be both fun and wistful at the same time; that’s partly due to the production, partly due to TJ Osborne’s vocal quality, and partly due to the songs themselves. Lyrical brilliance is not the main focus of this album, but it’s also been a bit underappreciated in terms of the songwriting. The themes are similar, but the lyrics themselves tell a deeper story. “Weed, Whiskey, and Willie” sees the narrator using vices and records, or “bottles and vinyl” as the song says, to get through the hard times in his life. “Tequila Again” acknowledges that he’s actually got a bit of a drinking problem; it’s told in a lighthearted way and says that he’ll keep falling in and out of love with the drink, but it’s self-aware enough to recognize the issue. This goes a long way toward making it a better, smarter song than much of what we see in mainstream country these days. With that in mind, I have to mention “Drank Like Hank,” which is here just to be fun and does name-drop George Jones and Hank Williams. We all know there was more to these legends than their drinking problems, just as there’s more to Willie Nelson than weed, and I can see how people will have a problem with this, but I think it works in light of the other songs. There’s an underlying self-awareness in these tracks, and let’s face it, these legends did drink to excess. This song is catchy and fun, but more than that, it works on the album because the album as a whole is more self-reflective and tells more of a complete story rather than actually being nothing more than a one-dimensional, self-absorbed glorification of partying.

There are some more serious moments sprinkled in here to add weight to the record and also to create more variety and make it less of a party. “I Don’t Remember Me (Before You”) is one of the most interesting in terms of songwriting because at first, it appears to be just a love song saying that he can’t recall his life before this woman came along and changed it for the better. With subsequent listens, the ambiguity becomes clear, and you can see that maybe he’s also sad about literally losing the person he used to be before she came into his life. Perhaps it’s a mix of both, which would be a very accurate portrayal of how relationships can affect us and make us different people. “Pushing up Daisies (Love Alive)” is certainly the best melodically and provides a nice twist on loving someone forever; forever isn’t really a possibility, but this love will go on till they die.

It’s that mortality and feeling of being incredibly small which is just as much a part of sitting by the ocean as rum and Coke. The same waves that crashed to open the album with the easygoing “Slow Your Roll” remain there at the end of the sobering closer, “While You Still Can.” This is not a masterpiece lyrically, but there’s beauty in simplicity, and this song captures that. Instead of just saying live life to the fullest, it reminds us that nothing last forever, a simple yet sobering reality that’s all the more apparent when you’re staring out at the endless sea.

So, overall, I really enjoy this. There’s not a song I’d skip–even “A couple Wrongs Makin’ it Alright,” which has some layered vocals and funky production and will no doubt be the most polarizing here, works for this listener. Everything has a warm, easy, laid-back quality that really fits the beach and party themes, and it’s a joy to hear all these great guitar licks and variety in instrumentation and influences. This is the kind of album we need in 2018, a record that knows what it wants to be, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and just provides a nice, easy listen. TJ Osborne says in the opening line of the whole thing, “take a little break from the rat race,” and ultimately, that’s what Port Saint Joe provides; it’s a break from all the sadness, the divisiveness, the ugliness, the sheer rush of our world right now. It’s the kind of escape you can get sitting on the beach watching the waves crash onto the shore, but we don’t all live near the coast, so Brothers Osborne have brought this album to us. Great record, and one that will likely be one of my favorite albums of 2018.

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Album Review: Jason Aldean–Rearview Town

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Rating: 6/10

I can sense the number of readers/followers I’m about to upset or outright lose with this take on Jason Aldean, and on the surface, I understand. It’s easy to hear the name Jason Aldean and think “Dirt Road Anthem” and resent him for his introduction of rap into the mainstream. It’s easy to think of the even more atrocious “1994,” a stain on the country genre and really all of music that I wish I could forget. But Aldean’s also given us songs like “The Truth,” “Fly Over States,” and “Amarillo Sky.” He’s released “Night Train,” separating himself from his counterparts by singing a song with the same themes but with more detailed and clever imagery. More than that, he’s always included solid, even stellar album cuts. He’s a frustrating artist because it’s hard not to wonder why he keeps those good songs buried, but at the same time, he’s refreshingly consistent. When you press play on a Jason Aldean record, you know what you’re getting–some forgettable or even awful singles and some truly great gems to go along with them. Aldean’s never going to blow you away with his songwriting or give you any profound revelations, but that’s not what you come to a Jason Aldean record for anyway, and if he were the worst thing on country radio, we honestly wouldn’t have much to complain about anymore.

It’s because on a Jason Aldean album, there is consistent balance. I don’t want to speak for stricter traditionalists out there, but most of us are simply advocating for balance. Most of us don’t have a problem with pop country or even modern influences per se, but our issue lies in the fact that this music is the only option and eradicating the traditional and the substantive in the mainstream. Aldean’s not offering traditional, but his records do provide a balance of substance, and that makes it easier to tolerate the crap.

On the substantive side of this record, we have several standouts. That’s another consistent thing about aldean; when he’s good, he’s pretty great. One highlight is the collaboration with Miranda Lambert called “Drowns the Whiskey,” taking the classic country heartbreak song and making it fresh and modern. I do wish we heard Miranda a bit more–I always prefer these things when the featured artist actually has some solo lines instead of just providing harmonies–but she’s actually distinctive, gets more than one or two obligatory lines, and imagine this, is actually a country star instead of some random pop princess. There’s also some pretty substantial steel in this track, which is always an added bonus.

The title track and “Blacktop Gone” frame this song in the heart of the album, and together, these three create the strongest portion of the record. “Blacktop Gone” and “Rearview Town” are mirror images of each other, each reflecting the same theme of leaving a one-horse town and each delivered in the same key, like two halves of the same thought. “Blacktop Gone” is the lighter version, with the narrator seeming to leave this town in good spirits simply because he’s looking for freedom and a new life. It seems to be something he’s always wanted to do, as if he never had any intention of staying here longer than was necessary. The title track is a more melancholy picture, with our narrator deeply affected by having to leave. He knows he can’t make it in this town, and memories also haunt him, but he still hates to leave it behind–“never thought I’d ever leave it.”

“Better at Being Who I Am” provides another great moment lyrically, as well as what feels like a very real moment for Aldean, depicting a character who is breaking it off with a lover because they’re just too different. He’s better on his side of the tracks and being himself; “The square peg, round hole things’ too hard.” “High Noon Neon” also portrays the classic country breakup song in a more modern way, much like “Drowns the Whiskey.” I can only guess why electronic production is his choice on these songs and really on much of this record, as he usually veers toward arena rock, but both of these tracks suffer from overproduction and from generally not sounding sonically like Jason aldean. That said, they’re still two of the strongest lyrically. The arena rock style is displayed on “I’ll Wait For You” to decent effect to convey the desperation in this particular song, and although I’m not the greatest “You Make it Easy” apologist, finding it more boring than anything, it can be counted on the more substantive half as well.

The thing about the other half of this and about Jason aldean as an artist is even when it’s not great, it’s mostly believable. Aldean sings with conviction and passion, and it’s hard to call him inauthentic. I know that word’s been misused and manipulated to death by mainstream and independent crowds alike, but the point is that Jason Aldean genuinely sounds like a guy who’s set foot in some rearview towns and gotten drunk on some tailgates. He appeals to a blue collar demographic in a way that actually seems real and borne of experience, as opposed to many of his mainstream peers. Instead of developing that into more stuff like the title track or “Amarillo Sky,” he generally chooses to spend about half his album on back roads. The result is that the majority of the rest of this becomes forgettable, interchangeable material, but it’s at least delivered with some personality and heart.

I have to single out the God-awful exceptions to this, though, which come in “Like You Were Mine” and “Gettin’ Warmed Up.” He attempts to rap in both of them, something someone should really tell him to never do again because as a singer, Jason’s got charisma, but as a rapper, he is shockingly bad. The latter, aside from the rap, is literally, right down to the title, a carbon copy of his former hit “Just Gettin’ started.” I actually put on that track and noticed that one of the lyrics there is “we’re just gettin’ warmed up.” We’re always saying mainstream country is out of ideas and rehashing old clichés and drumbeats, but this is literally like Aldean and his team took that song and said, “Hey, this worked once. Can we do this again?”

The other major problem, as I mentioned before, is the electronic production. It’s not even so much that it’s electronic production over more country sounds–although I wouldn’t object to more country sounds if he wanted to use them–it’s that it doesn’t sound like Aldean sonically. “I’ll Wait For You” is one of the few songs which sounds like him with its arena rock style. He traditionally hasn’t gravitated toward all these drum loops. They’re cluttered on “Better at Being Who I Am” and unnecessary on other songs. “Drowns the Whiskey,” which features all that steel and sings of heartbreak, might have bridged the mainstream/independent gap well if it sounded more like normal Aldean, but more traditional-minded fans probably won’t get past that loop. It all feels very trend-chasing, and it’s really kind of odd considering how consistently Jason Aldean this is in basically all other aspects.

So, in standard Jason Aldean style, he’s given us a mixed record. The good songs here are standouts, providing some quality and substance in the midst of the endless party. As for the endless party itself, at least for the most part it has some personality. If he could just refrain from rapping, there wouldn’t be anything God-awful here, just a lot of filler. But this is basically what you expect from a Jason Aldean release, and as I said before, if this were the worst that came out of the mainstream, we wouldn’t have much of a problem.

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Single Review: Carrie Underwood’s “Cry Pretty”

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Rating: 8/10

Yes, Carrie Underwood has new music. I think we all knew that if we were living anywhere on the planet this week, so let’s get right to the point.

This song so blatantly flaunts established country radio convention that it becomes necessary to make a list of things it does to fly in the face of that institution.

  • it’s a mid-tempo ballad, not some upbeat summer anthem
  • it contains actual steel guitar
  • it features four female songwriters which must be some sort of unspoken crime in Nashville
  • it actually speaks to the female perspective instead of whatever “Female” thought it was doing
  • there’s actual emotion, but it’s nothing to do with love or anything else stereotypical

And yet, Carrie Underwood has the gall to release this to country radio–not only that, to choose to release it despite the pressure to release her Super Bowl anthem “The Champion” which featured Ludacris instead. That song, despite not being country in the slightest and not being very good in whatever genre it landed beyond its original purpose, probably would have done well in today’s radio environment. Yet she chose this decidedly country pop song and exercised leadership with that decision, more than we can say for many other mainstream country artists.

The song itself starts off with just Carrie and some very faint electric guitar, and credit to her for being very restrained at the beginning and slowly building throughout the song to reflect emotions getting out of hand and becoming uncontrollable. She’s singing about those times when our emotions get the best of us; we can fake it with a”pretty lie” or brush it off with a “pretty smile,” but it’s impossible to “cry pretty.” She asserts that crying is human and all part of being a person and a woman–it could be in response to the way she removed herself from the public to heal after injuring her face, but the details are vague. The vagueness is both a drawback to the song and a thing that will keep it more relatable to a wider audience. This is Carrie Underwood, famous singer, always in the spotlight, actually being vulnerable and making herself an equal with all of us. It’s why this song will work–it shows that she’s really not that different to any of us, and it will speak to people because of that.

And it will most likely get played on country radio as well because it’s Carrie Underwood we’re talking about, and she’s pretty much one of the only women guaranteed to have success in the format. Credit to her for taking advantage of that position and releasing this song, adding her name to the growing number of artists channeling good singles out into the mainstream.

Written by: Carrie Underwood, Lori McKenna, Liz Rose, Hillary Lindsey

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Single Review: Kelsea Ballerini’s “I Hate Love Songs”

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Rating: 7/10

Wow, it feels good to be able to sit down and positively review a Kelsea Ballerini single–and even more than that, to have something good to say about a song partly concocted by Shane McAnally. Kelsea had already showed significant growth and maturity on her second album, and I was hoping we’d see something like this released as a single. Hopefully, we’ll see it have the same kind of success as some of her previous stuff because maybe she’ll keep releasing substantive, if pop-flavored, material to country radio.

The thing about this that makes me think its success is highly possible is that while substantive, it’s still fun. It’s clever and witty, bringing a much-needed slice of humor to the genre similar to what we saw with Maddie & Tae’s “Shut up and Fish.” But whereas that song forsook the clingy guy altogether in favor of fishing, this one only casts off the tired, worn-out clichés associated with love. She still loves her man, but she’s sick of “cakes with white frosting” and “Valentine’s dinner” and notes that “you’d die if your heart really skipped.” He makes her feel something, but it “sure as hell ain’t butterflies,” and they were drunk when they met, so neither of them can remember their anniversary.

It’s all delivered with a laid-back lounge atmosphere that calls to mind vintage pop; yes, it’s definitely pop more than country, but it’s like a 50’s style more than anything modern. I can almost hear Whitney Rose doing something like this, only maybe less produced. The delivery is part of its charm, as she’s telling us all these lines in an offhanded, casual way, so you might not pick up on the jokes right away.

This is Kelsea Ballerini’s smartest, most mature single to date. The lyrics are sharp, and the delivery fits the song well. She’s also kept the fun personality which characterized her earlier singles, refining it into wit and humor rather than immaturity. This should be a hit, and I hope it will be because this is both the right direction for Ballerini and a move toward more quality in the mainstream.

Written by: Kelsea Ballerini, Shane McAnally, Trevor Rosen

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Single Review: Miranda Lambert’s “Keeper of the Flame”

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Rating: 8/10

Maybe “Vice” was too edgy and serious, and country radio was too afraid to play a song about a woman drinking and having casual sex. I have no idea what the problem with “We Should be Friends” was, but since it wasn’t one of the standouts from The Weight of These Wings for me personally and also didn’t seem to resonate extremely well with the public, I’ll give country radio a pass here. And “Tin Man” was obviously just too good and too country for the format in order to ever have any hope of success, despite its ridiculous sales and award show spikes, because promoting a single with proven sales behind it just makes too much sense.

But if “Keeper of the Flame” can’t manage to do something meaningful at radio, I will be forced to conclude that it’s because Miranda has breasts–because this is a perfect 2018 country radio single, complete with anthemic lyrics, a catchy melody, and your standard rising choruses so common to the format. And oh yeah, it actually has substance and pays tribute to the singers who came before Lambert and the ones who will come after, as she keeps the flame of country music alive. But although it honors tradition lyrically, its production is modern country rock, featuring synthesizers, and in short, not something which should be polarizing to radio. In fact, it’s a song that bridges the gap between the mainstream and independent, the modern and traditional very well, like the way we had all hoped Scotty McCreery might do with his latest album.

This single is an example of how to move country music forward in a respectful manner, and in a practical sense, it’s also the best one Miranda Lambert has chosen from this album. Let’s hope it can make an impact and that her radio career isn’t completely dead at this point because success for this song means success for a song of substance, for a woman artist who deserves to be recognized, and most importantly, for a song that actually sounds like it belongs in the country genre.

Written by: Miranda Lambert, Natalie Hemby, Liz Rose