Tag Archives: traditional country

Reviews

Album Review: Reba McEntire–Stronger Than the Truth

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Rating: 7.5/10

As was discussed in my recent collaboration with The Musical Divide on the importance of continuing to cover and discuss mainstream artists, country music finds itself in an identity crisis in 2019. Bro country has long since died, and now the genre is seeking to reclaim its core fans. We’ve seen Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton release recent quality, country-sounding singles to radio. We’ve witnessed the meteoric rise of Luke Combs as listeners gravitate toward his authenticity and relatability. And we’ve watched George Strait come out of nowhere to suddenly regain airplay with “Every Little Honky Tonk Bar.”

Somewhere along the way, as we lost the substance and sounds of country music, we also lost the female perspective. Women became “girls” who rode shotgun in trucks and sipped drinks in clubs. NO one wanted to hear from a woman because it seemed they had nothing of value to say. The career resurgence of Reba McEntire is an embracing of both substantive and traditional country music, as well as an acknowledgement that forsaking the perspective of women might not have been such a sensible idea after all.

As I said of George Strait, a new Reba album is never a bad idea and always promises to deliver in both sound and quality. Stronger Than the Truth is not some forward-thinking opus that will blow the minds of all its listeners, but it’s a welcome return for Reba McEntire that shows her embracing her roots proudly.

First of all, can we please get an entire Western swing record from Reba? The opener, “Swing All Night Long With You,” fits her like a glove and remains one of the strongest tracks on the whole thing. It’s so infectious, with its cheerful piano and lively fiddles and guitar licks. “NO U in Oklahoma” is also a standout with its fun, upbeat production and catchy melodies. Reba brings a personality to both these songs that is frankly unmatched on the rest of the record. It would be great to see her explore this for a whole album; we often see country artists record a bluegrass album or a gospel project later in their careers–as McEntire herself did recently–and for Reba, a Western swing album would be perfect. She has a great voice for it and an obvious passion for the discipline.

Most of the album isn’t nearly as lighthearted as these two selections, however. Much of the material deals with heartbreak and pain, exploring the emotions so often associated with country music yet also so often ignored in recent years by mainstream performers. “The Bar’s Getting Lower” is an almost brutal slice of honesty, as the narrator contemplates having a one-night stand with the man she’s just met in the bar because she’s getting older and lonelier, feeling that she might never settle down and make her mother proud. It’s a song that will be relatable to so many, to the ones who have directly felt this desperation and to the ones who live in fear of one day becoming this woman. “Cactus in a Coffee Can” is a nice story song and one that will probably be universally liked, telling the tale of a woman who sits next to McEntire on a plane, pouring out her life story of a mother who abandoned her on the day the girl was born and struggled with addiction until the day she died. The title track remains one of the highlights as well, simple in its execution but timeless in its message as the main character tries to cope with the soul-crushing knowledge that her husband has betrayed her.

There is a lull in the heart of the album where a moment of energy would have helped to lighten the mood. “Storm in a Shot Glass,” one of the album’s most catchy selections, could have been sequenced differently to better break up the otherwise mid-tempo, depressing stretch from tracks 2 through 7. It’s also here that we find some songs which are told better by others elsewhere on the album; for example, “The clown” is essentially Part 2 of “Stronger Than the Truth” and doesn’t tell the story nearly as well as that song. It also feels like the piano drags on forever, which admittedly goes with the repeated line “the piano kept playing” to illustrate that life goes on all around us even when our hearts have just been broken, but the whole thing just feels a bit overwrought. “Your Heart” is also pretty forgettable and seems to be advising women to lead men on; this was probably not the actual intention, but the song is framed that way. Trimming a couple of these songs, sequencing them a little better, or even adding another upbeat moment here would have really gone a long way toward keeping the album from dragging and becoming too depressing.

Overall, though, this is a nice, solid slice of country music and a welcome return for one of the genre’s best. The strongest songs are near the front and back of the record, and there’s some filler in the middle, but there are some truly excellent tracks here. The Western swing numbers have instant replay value, and “The Bar’s getting Lower” is one of the best songs of the year so far. The songwriting is strong throughout most of the record, the production is interesting, the music is country, and Reba sounds great vocally. Another solid album from Music Row, another encouraging sign for the genre as a whole, and another quality offering from Reba McEntire.

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Reviews

Album Review – Cliff Westfall – Baby You Win

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Rating: 8/10

When I saw a review for Cliff Westfall’s Baby You Win on Saving Country Music, I knew I had to check this album out. In the review, the overall sound of this album was discussed, and I listened to one of the songs Trigger left for the readers to hear. It was fast, the sound was straight out of the 50s and 60s, and I was sold.

That song was the opening track, “It Hurt Her to Hurt Me”. With the faster tempo and overall production, I was immediately hooked. In my opinion, it’s got some of the best sounds of 50s and 60s country, but it’s not in a way that indicates copying or a gimmick. It’s simply Cliff Westfall’s style. The whole album just has this old-fashioned feel, and it’s brilliant. I love the varied tempos that are present here, too. Most, like “Hurt Her to Hurt Me”, are actually faster, and personally, I’m all for a faster album.

As varied as the tempos are, the overall theme of the album is love. Almost every song on the album discusses relationships, either the good or bad parts. The aforementioned “It Hurt Her to Hurt Me” is a song about a man whose partner has walked out on him after one too many instances of his wrongdoing. Still, he thinks it hurt her to hurt him. It’s hilarious, catchy, and a song I keep returning to. My favorite song off of this record is “The Man I Used to Be”. It’s a more upbeat song about the downfall of a relationship, all because the man isn’t meeting the higher standards he’d set for himself during the earlier days of their marriage. His wife isn’t looking for another man, she’s just wishing he was more like the man she married.

I won’t go into a track-by-track analysis about this album, simply because they really are mostly about the ups and downs of love. The only exception is “End of the Line”. It’s a fun song about someone who’s a bit too wild for his own good. I have to say,I do love how Cliff Westfall makes so many of these faster songs go more in-depth lyrically.

My least favorite has to be “Lie If You Must”. It just doesn’t really do anything for me. I could honestly do without this song. I just find it forgettable.

Still, this album is one you should check out if you’re into the 50s and 60s eras in country music. There’s sadness, happiness, and just some of the best production I’ve heard in a while. I love the instrumentation, too. This album cannot be classified as anything other than true traditional country. There’s something on this album for everyone, especially given the large focus on relationship-tnemed songs, and everyone knows that love is relatable. As this is Cliff Westfall’s debut album, I am excited to see what he does next.

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Reviews

Album Review – Cody Jinks – Lifers

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Rating: 8/10

I’ve been a fan of Cody Jinks ever since I bought his last two albums. His style of country music, as well as his vocal delivery, really appeals to me. Therefore, when I heard that he was releasing a new album, and his first on Rounder Records, I was excited to hear it. Now that I have, I can safely say that he’s still making some of the best country music today.

The songs on this album have various themes. The track I like the most, though, is the cover of “Stranger”. It’s all about how he doesn’t recognize the man in the mirror. He’s getting older, but it doesn’t fit with the way he sees himself. I just really like this kind of reflective song. My second favorite is the title track, “Lifers”. It’s all about the struggles of the working man. No matter how hard things get, he keeps on going. It reminds me of people I know who do the same, and i think this kind of song is something we should hear more often.

“Colorado” is a slower love song that I liked upon first hearing it. The melody is one that’s stuck in my head, and in the song, he’s saying that he hopes the woman he used to be with doesn’t believe that he never thinks about her or Colorado, because that’s simply not true. I also really enjoyed the fun and upbeat “Big Last Name”, which is all about a woman marrying someone with a big last name and lots of money just to keep the privileges she’s grown up with all of her life. “Must Be the Whiskey” is a song I like for its melody as well as the catchy chorus. The man in the song is tormented by a past love, and he’s trying to remember and drinking to forget. “Desert Wind” is interesting both lyrically and instrumentally. The tempo is somewhere in the middle, and the melody is darker. It’s the story of a man on a journey to Mexico, who ultimately didn’t find what he was searching for and came back home. It stood out to me because of its uniqueness.

The rest of the songs are likable, not bad, though not ones that stood out quite as much. My least favorite is probably “Head Case”, just because it hasn’t really stuck with me at all. I also find “Holy Water”, the opening track, a bit forgettable, though the song’s instrumentation is definitely fun.

The thing I really appreciate about this album is that all of the songs aren’t the same thematically. There’s songs about life’s struggles, leaving a relationship, remembering past love, and even one about making an unfortunate trip to Mexico. Along with that, I love how the tempos and instrumentation are varied. I can definitely say that you never get bored while listening to this album. The steel guitar is awesome, and there was even some piano, which I think is a very under-used instrument in country music. This is definitely one of the liveliest albums I’ve heard this year, in terms of musicianship.

Overall, Lifers is another solid addition to the discography of Cody Jinks. It’s fun, thought-provoking, and full of country instrumentation. While it doesn’t reach the great heights of Adobe Sessions or I’m Not the Devil, that’s okay. It doesn’t have to. As long as Cody Jinks keeps making consistent country music like this, I’ll keep on listening.

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Reviews

Album Review: Down Low by Wes Youssi & The County Champs

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Rating: 8/10

It’s a strange state in which country music finds itself in 2018. You swear it’s dead and gone, the music of a forgotten and simpler time. The mainstream has gone pop, and many of the radio stars wouldn’t know a steel guitar if it fell out of the sky and hit them in the face. You find authenticity and substance in Texas and Oklahoma, but much of that music is a hybrid of country and rock. You seek it out in Americana, and find great music there as well, but in the end, it’s still not the sound you miss. When you do hear someone make a “classic” country record, it’s so hell-bent on being old-fashioned that it sucks the beauty right out of the discipline. Then you find a random Internet comment from someone about a band from Portland, Oregon, and you stumble upon the most country thing you’ve heard in years, and you realize it’s not dead after all, you just have to know where to look.

Wes Youssi & the County Champs haven’t been affected by any of those trends in the mainstream or in Texas and east Nashville; they’ve just calmly released a staunchly country album. To all those people who want their country music to be forward-thinking and genre-bending, this may not be the album for you because it’s more a reimagining of styles than a reinvention of the wheel. It’s soaked in steel and layered with fiddle, and Wes Youssi sounds like he could have emerged from the earliest days of country music, both in his tone and his phrasing. It’s three chords and shuffling beats, and flavored with a rockabilly influence at times to give the band a unique sound. It’s like you just walked into an old country bar and heard this record coming out of the jukebox.

But at the same time, it’s not bogged down by outdated language or by a labored effort to sound retro. It’s modern in lyric and timeless in theme, it just happens to be delivered in a throwback style. That fresh approach is sprinkled all over the record, but it’s never more apparent than in “Green dream,” where the character in the song starts growing weed to make his living–“in these hard times, the treasure’s under your feet.” A song like that would have never come out of classic country, and even today, it wouldn’t have come out of the South so naturally as it does out of Oregon. And there’s passion and life in this material; you can tell Wes Youssi has a passion for these songs and stories, not just for the traditional sound itself. This is the record I wish I’d had on hand when I heard Joshua Hedley’s album because this puts a record like that to shame and explains perfectly what I struggled so hard to make sense of with that project–I wanted to like it so much, and stylistically, it was excellent. But it lacked the passion and freshness Wes Youssi brings to the table here–a record like this isn’t a copy of the old styles, reimagined for the sake of nostalgia and irony, it’s proof that those old styles can still be relevant and relatable in 2018.

Another problem with some of the more traditional records I’ve covered in the past two years is a lack of energy. Some recent examples of that would be Vivian Leva and Kayla Ray’s albums. Although I enjoyed both, I can understand how some may find those records a bit sleepy. Down Low can hardly be accused of that distinction. It’s full of upbeat moments, from the infectious title track to the catchy, more rockabilly “Cadillac Man” to the bluegrass-influenced “Southbound Train.” The band seems to understand the desperate need for upbeat traditional music like this, as displayed in the closer, “Champ Boogie,” where Wes Youssi laments the number of girls standing around in bars and clubs looking for romance, but with “hardly any dudes that wanna dance.”

There’s a humor and wit in these songs that is missing in a lot of modern country. That’s best exemplified in “crazy Train.” The song tells us of a dysfunctional marriage–they’re always yelling and fighting and breaking dishes. But in the end, they are right for each other; he advises: “Let’s talk about what we do right. we sure as hell can start a fight. And when it comes to old-time lovin,” all we need’s the moon to get goin’.” He also resolves to use paper dishes from now on.

This classic, throwback style isn’t going to be for everyone; even among the more country fans, it’s going to be a bit too unpolished and rough around the edges for some. This is for the people who like a little more grit in their classic country, and it’s fresh enough to appeal to some of the more progressive listeners as well. It’s the record I’d show to people who enjoy good modern-sounding country, to show them this traditional style isn’t archaic and outdated, that it doesn’t always sound as lifeless as many think it is, and that it can be fresh and fun in 2018. It’s an album that could turn those fans onto this sound and to older music. Just a solid, fun, replayable collection of traditional tunes keeping the sound and spirit of country music alive and well.

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Reviews

Collaborative Review – Rhyan Sinclair – Barnstormer

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This is one of the most fun collaborations we’ve ever gotten to do because we were able to discover a new artist together and fall in love with her music right from the start.

Conversation

Megan: So this is cool, we’ve got a debut record from a 17-year-old songwriter from Kentucky. Lots of cool songwriters coming out of Appalachia these days, so you definitely have to check something like this out. And it’s great when we get to talk about debuts, because it’s not only about that album, but also a brand-new artist to love. So what jumps out to you about Rhyan Sinclair herself? Why should people check her out?

Brianna: Well, she’s got a very distinctive sound. Rhyan Sinclair reminds me of Miranda Lambert vocally. More than that, though, she is a very good writer. You definitely can’t tell she’s so young by these lyrics. They make her seem a lot older, and these songs are very real because of that. You feel many different emotions in this album, that’s for sure.

Megan: The voice hit me too. The tone is sort of similar to Ashley Monroe and to Clare Bowen who played Scarlett on Nashville, but you’re right, the other night when you said Miranda, it hit me. I can definitely hear that in her accent and her phrasing. Like early Miranda, from Kerosene and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. To that end, we both found some vocal imperfection in it. You forgive that because she’s 17, and she’ll certainly have time to develop.
As far as the writing, yes, she definitely impresses me. Some of those lines are just outstanding. I agree about the variety in emotions and tempos, although I tend to prefer her slower songs. I do think it’s cool that with such a soft voice, she still does the up-tempo stuff and does it well.

Brianna: What I found most refreshing about the varied tempos on this album is how, for the most part, there’s a slower song and then a faster one. It keeps things from dragging. I like her faster songs quite a bit better, but it’s true that a lot of the slower songs are quite deep and emotional. In short, I think she’s good at whatever tempo she chooses.
I do agree that there are some vocal imperfections, but I’m really excited to see where she goes from here. Once I got past all of that, I really got into this album.

Megan: Based on that, it sounds like our highlights will probably be different. So what were some of yours?

Brianna: I think my favorite song was “The Hourglass.” I loved how the lyrics tell of making the most of the time you have, and yet that time still flies by. It’s life. I don’t think it gets more real than that. I really liked “Barnstormer,” too. Sure, the theme of being a wanderer has been done before, but I like this song because she talks about the ways people see someone like her. I also really liked “The Sad Song.” She says she’s writing it because that’s the only way she can really get her feelings out. That’s got to be true for many songwriters, I’m sure. “Retrograde” is really good too, because she’s tired of being under the weather, as she says. Skeleton Sam” was a really good example of a fast song about a darker topic, I thought. In this case, the subject of the lyrics was a ghost. It’s not often that a singer can sing about something dark at such a fast tempo and make it work, but Rhyan Sinclair does. Finally, I quite liked “I Can’t Sleep.” Again, not being able to sleep do to having things on our minds is something most, if not all, of us have had to deal with at some point.
What were the highlights of this album for you?

Megan: “I Can’t Sleep” was easily my favorite. There’s something so beautiful about the melody of that song that really goes with the lyrics and makes something special. I also liked “Kentucky Night Sky,” and it went well in the track placement after “I Can’t Sleep.” “Selfishly, Heartlessly” was a really nice breakup song; I love that line: “you’re selfishly, heartlessly doing just fine,” something we can all relate to, that we wish the other person was hurting as much as we were. “Barnstormer” and “Free at Last” were my two favorites in the faster category, but mostly, I liked the slow stuff. And I love the way she hits high notes almost out of nowhere. We talked about the vocal imperfections, but the way she can just soar to all these beautiful high notes, even singing them softly as opposed to belting them out, is just effortless and makes those songs and those moments better to me.

Brianna: I do agree with you about that line in “Selfishly, Heartlessly.” She’s got a way of making you feel empathetic, and like the experiences talked about in these songs are ones you can relate to. And as for her vocal ability, I have to agree that she does a great job with those high notes. She’s very subtle about them, and that makes them all the more impacting.

Megan: Yep, you’re right. So I think this is a really strong debut, but I do think it could have been better. I’d have like to have seen it trimmed from 14 songs to 12, and then more time could have been spent to polish it up. Like we said, there’s vocal imperfections and things, and she’ll definitely have lots of time to develop, but it does feel like it could have been a little tighter. We’d probably disagree about what songs to trim because “Retrograde” was actually one of my least favorites, but I just think it would have been better a little shorter and handled with a bit more care.

Brianna: I agree. If a couple songs had been trimmed, I do think the whole album would have been more solid. This, along with some vocal imperfections and a few times where I found the production a little weak, are my complaints about this project. Still, the writing is just too good overall, the tempos keep this from being boring, and Rhyan Sinclair has some very well-done singing moments on here. I’m rating it a very solid 7.

Megan: I’m really excited about this artist. I always love finding something new and fresh and cool to talk about, and Rhyan Sinclair is the kind of artist that makes this outlet fun. I love her voice, the tone and especially all those lovely high notes–we don’t have enough country women nailing notes in the stratosphere like that, that’s very impressive. Her potential as a writer is there in spades as well. I do think the album feels a bit too long and a little rushed in the production aspect; they could have taken some more time here to really polish up some of these songs. But what a great debut record, and Rhyan Sinclair should definitely be on your radar. 7.5 from me.

Brianna: I completely agree, we need more artists with this kind of vocal range. I’m excited to see where Rhyan Sinclair takes her music next. If you’re looking for a new traditional female country artist, look no further than Rhyan Sinclair and Barnstormer.

Ratings

Megan: 7.5
Brianna: 7

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