Tag Archives: Western swing

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: Willie Nelson–Last Man Standing

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Rating: 9/10

Eat your heart out, every Americana artist ever who has either bored me to death or failed to consistently sing on pitch for an entire performance because Willie Nelson, at the age of eighty-four, has just owned all of you. I’d like to hand deliver this record to all of you who, in your twenties and thirties, have half the vocal prowess and not an ounce of the charisma, with that simple message: “Owned.” As he says in a song from his last album, he “woke up still not dead again today,” so he apparently decided to bless us with another great record and embarrass a sizable chunk of the makers of independent music in the process.

As for that album, God’s Problem Child was a good record, and I stand behind my thoughts about it, but one listen to the opener and title track of this new one inherently and immediately makes me enjoy that album less. That album reflected heavily on the end of life, and the songs were well-written, but it didn’t really have too much staying power or relatibility for me. This one deals with many of the same subjects, but more often than not, they’re approached in a lighthearted, charismatic way. The aforementioned “Still Not dead” was a rare moment of levity on God’s Problem Child, but this record is mostly lively. The title track muses, “I don’t want to be the last man standing, oh wait a minute, maybe I do” and advises people to go ahead and leave “if you’re in such a hurry” because heaven and hell are both waiting. Heaven and hell appear again on “Heaven is Closed” as he remarks that “heaven is closed and hell’s overcrowded,” so he’ll just stay here on earth. He says he can hear someone calling him to come in from this world, which he calls “the craziness,” but still he remains here.

That craziness is the center of one of the albums’ best songs, “Me and You.” This deals with the current divisiveness of our world, and the genius in the writing here is that he says “it’s just me and you” against everyone, and then we find that he’s talking to himself. Another cool part is that he doesn’t take a specific political or social stance, so people on both sides of the divide can surely relate to this, to feeling like everyone else besides them has gone crazy, or that, as Nelson sings about a friend with whom he can no longer have discussions, “he ain’t got a lick of sense.” This is how to write a political song–this doesn’t divide or cause half an audience to hate it, it becomes something people from all backgrounds and political affiliations can get behind. Another moment of slightly less obvious political and social commentary comes in “Don’t tell Noah,” and again, this message could strike a chord with both sides, as he’s basically telling us all not to take positions on things about which we know nothing–“don’t tell Noah about the flood, don’t tell Jesus about the blood.” This one features some upbeat piano and harmonica which really add to its infectiousness.

This is just so much more fun and charismatic than Willie’s last album, and like I say, inasmuch as I don’t want to take away from that record, this inadvertently does just that by showing Willie Nelson in a more relatable light. Willie’s at his best when he’s doing these upbeat tunes like “Don’t Tell Noah” or the Western swing-influenced “Ready to roar.” I’ve already mentioned the piano and the harmonica, both integral parts of this record, but the great guitar licks sprinkled throughout this also add a lot of flavor to it. This swing/jazz-influenced country style suits Nelson more than the restrained, adult contemporary ballads which characterized his last album. Not only that, it makes the ballads, like “Something You Get Through,” stand out more, whereas they ran together some on God’s Problem Child.

And it’s worth noting that wile we have all these artists–like Joshua Hedley most recently, but he’s not the only one–trying so hard to be vintage and throwback that they’ve even adapted their songwriting to make it feel retro, here we have Willie Nelson using modern phrases like “it’s getting hard to watch my pals check out” in the title track, and owning an iPhone in “I Ain’t Got Nothin’.” The sentiments in Nelson’s songs remain timeless, and this slight modernization only adds an accessibility to his lyrics. I’m not saying doing this is vital, and indeed, some songs sound dated when they’re modernized too much, but the point is, not everything has to be retro to make it “authentic,” and often, the concentrated effort to make something so actually renders it the opposite, leaving the writing sometimes feeling unnatural. You’d be an absolute idiot to call Willie nelson anything other than authentic. I wonder what the throwback types think about the fact that Nelson and his songwriting partner and producer, Buddy Cannon, wrote most of this album by text…but I digress.

This is a great record on so many fronts. Willie Nelson still sounds good vocally, and his charisma is just ridiculous. I wrote that God’s Problem Child was a good record, but not probably an album that would make new Willie Nelson fans; this one undoubtedly has that potential, with its relatable songwriting and vibrant personality. Much like John Prine’s latest album, it paints the end of life in a humorous light and somewhat alleviates the fear of death. And like Prine, Nelson proves that artist can still have something meaningful, worthwhile, and yes, even relatable and entertaining to say no matter their age. This record will have staying power, and it will be in the conversation when December comes around.

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Reviews

Album Review: Emily Herring–Gliding

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Rating: 7/10

How often on these endless reality shows and talent competitions do we see judges and vocal coaches stress the importance of individuality? They are not only looking for raw talent, but something unique and fresh and different. And why not, when so much of popular music continues to pump out more of the same ideas from different voices? Any music class will tell you that music cannot expand further, that at this point, it’s just rehashing old ways and modes of doing the same things–this is one of the biggest criticisms of contemporary music by those who study classical and believe modern music to be somehow inferior to that discipline. So it’s up to those makers of modern music to work within the confines of their craft to continue to stand out and present us with new ideas. And country music is often regarded as one of the most restrictive genres in which to create things, so it’s even more impressive when you see a country artist proving all of these theories wrong.

That is what we see with Emily Herring’s latest album, Gliding, as she presents a traditional approach heavily blended with influences of Western swing. So many country artists today in the independent realms are doing this east Nashville/Americana sound that by now has been absolutely done to death to the point it’s about the least original and most clichéd thing you can possibly do outside the mainstream, or they’re mixing in the raw rock influences of Red dirt, or they’re making West Coast country with a modern take on the polished Nashville sound. This isn’t any of that, it’s something all its own, and yet it’s more traditional than many records released this year. Herring’s influence comes closer to that of Bob Wills than anything else, but this record is not trapped in that time period either, as she’s got a voice reminiscent of Robyn Ludwick or perhaps Tanya Tucker, which lends itself to harder mixes of country and rock and gives this album yet another unique quality.

But neither Ludwick nor Tucker possess the falsetto of Emily Herring, an addition which renders her able to pull off softer, more vulnerable songs like “Midnight” and “Yellow Mailbox” right along with some of the harder stuff like the title track and the painfully honest “Right Behind Her.” This one is the highlight of the record, as she lays out the truth that she literally doesn’t know if she can go on living without her mother being there for her. “If my mother were to die, I fear that I’d be right behind her,” cuts even more when you know that her mother did die in the final stages of this album’s making. That bluntness in her writing comes out on the closer, “Getting By,” also, as she describes her days as a mechanic and only being responsible for herself, trying to stretch a dime in order to survive.

This album needed some moments of levity to brighten the mood, and they come in the form of two covers, “All the Millers in Milwaukee” and “Semi Truck.” The former especially suits Emily and her voice and allows more of the fun side of her personality to stand out. It also fits more on the record as a whole than the latter because although light, it’s still a breakup song like much of the more serious material. There’s another lighter moment in the Western swing-infused “Best Thing I’ve Seen Yet,” and although it’s not a personal favorite, it adds balance to the album and shows another, more tender side of Emily Herring.

This album is not without its flaws, and it could have used perhaps another jolt of energy and maybe some sharper songwriting in places, but it’s still a good, promising record from Herring and one that is worth checking out, if only for its unique nature. Its propensity to draw from the influences of Western swing, combined with a voice like Emily’s, suited more for classic rock or harder country but somehow lending itself to these songs very well, makes this album intriguing and certainly memorable in the country space. It might not be a record you love on first listen; rather, it’s more an acquired thing, a potential you see in a song or two that unveils itself after a few listens to the whole album. In the end, it’s that potential which shines brightest about this release, and Emily Herring becomes another cool discovery of 2017, even if the year is nearly over. Not an album, and certainly not an artist, to be overlooked.

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