Music CDs Reviews - Page 12

The great American songwriter Stephen Foster died in 1863 at age 37, leaving behind a leather wallet containing 38 cents and a scrap of paper with the scrawled words, “Dear friends and gentle hearts.” To the last, he was writing songs.

Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster features artists such as Raul Malo, Alison Krauss and John Prine interpreting Foster’s most popular compositions (Camptown Races, Oh! Susanna) and lesser-known parlor songs. It is hard to imagine an album more affecting.

Foster’s music carries the inherent sadness of the man himself and the Civil War era in which he penned it. But performers such as David Ball, who brings a mournful feel to Old Folks At Home (Swanee River), and Mavis Staples, who infuses Hard Times Come Again No More with the heart-rending integrity of a Negro spiritual, prove that this beautiful dreamer’s suffering was not in vain.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Smooth and easy as fine wine, acclaimed jazz singer and pianist Krall has reached down deep—and reached out to her new husband, singer/songwriter Elvis Costello—to co-produce her eighth album, and her first that includes original compositions.

For the past decade, Krall has experienced virtually unheard of success for a jazz singer, earning gold and platinum records and other mainstream accolades for her renditions of the classic works of Cole Porter, and George and Ira Gershwin. Now, she’s embarked on the next chapter of her career by unveiling her own musical creations.

The six songs penned with Costello are the record’s best, as Costello’s sophisticated way with words blends seamlessly with Krall’s velvet vocals and late-night jazz piano playing.

I’ve Changed My Address ruminates on a restless woman moving on both physically and emotionally because home isn’t where her heart lives anymore. Narrow Daylight mines a pop vein with a low-key, gorgeous melody that floats on lyrics of love and longing.

Abandoned Masquerade finds Krall writing the music and leaving the lyrics all to Costello, whose adult themes of truth and honesty cut like a saber. Nimble piano work allows Krall’s ivory tinkling skills to really shine.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Clint Black
Spend My Time
Equity Music Label Group

On his first studio album in four years, Clint Black calls on the strengths that have kept him in good stead as one of country’s best New Traditionalists since his 1989 landmark album, Killin’ Time.

Foremost, of course, is his clear, pinched tenor and a delivery that boasts of his Texas upbringing with every barb-wired word. But the album also serves as a showcase for his producing talents and clear-eyed writing ability. (He wrote or co-wrote every song, many with longtime collaborator Hayden Nicholas.)

If some of Black’s past efforts sounded perhaps forced, Spend My Time carries a natural ease. As proof that his artistic fire burns as brightly as ever, his songs remain catchy and memorable. And on the romantic ballads, especially Just Like You and Me, he’s able to conjure exquisite lyrics and melodies that fall together like perfect lovers.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Buck Howdy
Skidaddle!
MCA Nashville Records

Saddlepals of every age will likely be charmed by Buck Howdy’s Skidaddle!, a collection of original cowpoke tunes and reworked classics that’s already sold more than 50,000 copies via the Internet. The genial Virginia turkey farmer and singing cowboy, who’s set to debut a television show later this year, rates as a children’s favorite through his Buck Howdy’s Cow Pie Radio, an XM Satellite theatre that’s been likened to “Gene Autry meets A Prairie Home Companion meets Raffi.”

Born in Grants Pass, Ore. (pop. 23,003), Howdy knows the difference between sagebrush and sarsaparilla, even as Buckaroo trades on shopworn Western homilies (“don’t go dancing wearing spur . . . never, ever eat a cow pie”) that children may still find amusing. If The Unicorn has an upsetting explanation for why the magical creatures make the endangered species list, other ditties such as the title song (“if there’s a mouse in your outhouse, skidaddle!”) will probably provoke giggles. By the time Howdy gets to One Day Soon, set to the tune of Let Us Break Bread Together, you’ll feel as if you’re sitting around the campfire, basking in the glow of a big ol’ Montana moon.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

A fixture of ’60s British pop (Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith), singer-songwriter-organist Steve Winwood went on to spectacular solo success, with 1990’s Back in the High Life claiming two Grammys, including Record of the Year. About Time, his first album in six years, finds him returning to a band framework, but combining rock ’n’ roll and world music. In building songs around African, Latin, and Caribbean rhythms, he enlists the help of celebrated jazz guitarist Jose Neto, with whom he also co-wrote three songs, and percussionist Walfredo Reyes Jr. But Winwood’s Hammond B-3 organ takes center stage, dictating the flavor of the record and supplying the bass parts. Several of the Latin numbers, including Domingo Morning, recall the best of Santana, while Final Hour conjures a Marvin Gaye-meets-Bob Marley fantasy. Winwood hits a highlight in reworking Timmy Thomas’ 1972 disco/funk/soul classic, Why Can’t We Live Together, to a hypnotic Latin groove. But his original songs often probe a renewal of spirit. “I have overlooked a part of me/I was escaping my reality,” he sings on Different Light, which may allude to his last album, the disappointing Junction Seven. From the sound of it, he has found his way home again.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Gary Allan
See If I Care
MCA Nashville Records

Gary Allan, the California honky-tonker who’s always found his true power as a long-suffering anti-hero, emerges as a country Chris Isaak on his new CD, See If I Care.

The CD’s best songs, such as Don’t Look Away, feature smoldering monologues and dreamy melodies that underscore his anguish and isolation. On Can’t Do It Again, in which he’s clearly undone from a lover’s betrayal, he wrestles to control his barely contained rage. In Songs About Rain, the pain is still simmering from his beloved’s marriage to another, a hurt that hasn’t been lessened by the passage of time.

Allan, who sings in a rough tenor, has always demonstrated a fondness for the Bakersfield/Buck Owens school of hard knocks. He pays homage to the form again with Guys Like Me, in which a dancing accordion and a guest vocal by the hang-dog Jim Lauderdale tip off a tongue-in-cheek lyric.

With his impeccable song selection, his marketable sex appeal and his stylistic “cool,” Allan could be country’s next superstar. See If I Care shows why.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Mark Wills
And The Crowd Goes Wild
Mercury Nashville Records

Since his 1996 debut, Mark Wills has established himself as a respected hitmaker, balancing sensitive, heartfelt ballads about love and family with mid-tempo rhythm numbers that play on cultural nostalgia (Nineteen Somethin’). On his new CD, And The Crowd Goes Wild, the Georgia native follows the same formula, presenting himself as the ultimate everyman, stopping every now and then to appreciate life’s special moments.

The title track weds an irresistibly jaunty rhythm to a lyric about following your dreams (“shining like a superstar”), whether they lie in NASCAR fame or other sports. Another offering, Suntan, captures the happy-go-lucky joys of summer, while the Southern rock Prisoner of the Highway pays tribute to long-distance truckers.

But on the remaining tracks, Wills returns to family dynamics. He’s a Cowboy addresses a child’s need for a man of strong stuff who will never let her down, while What She Sees in Me flips the coin to profile a man grateful for the love of his mother, wife and daughter. Other songs echo this theme, which remains a bedrock of modern country music. If the amiable Wills isn’t breaking new ground, his songs of what matters most offer much-needed balm in the post-9-11 era.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Patty Loveless
On Your Way Home
Epic Records

Patty Loveless knows exactly how to transform something old into something exciting and new. Like a favorite family meal updated just enough to give it a flavorful freshness, Patty Loveless’ music takes traditional country sounds and invigorates them with energy and originality.

The veteran hasn’t scored a Top 10 song since 1996, but she’s once again climbing the charts with a hit, Lovin’ All Night, because country radio has returned to the kind of roots-based music that is Loveless’ specialty.

The Kentucky redhead timed her return to commercial country music perfectly, and she sounds as forceful and as emotionally resonant as ever. She soars on heartbreaking ballads like I Don’t Want To Be That Strong and rocks with glee on uptempo stompers like I Wanna Believe. But the most unforgettable song is The Grandpa That I Know, about a young woman determined to remember an elder’s passion for life as she attends his funeral.

Loveless’ new album proves just how vital traditional country music can still sound when performed with talent and commitment.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Billy Currington
Billy Currington
Mercury Records

Despite his Hollywood good looks, newcomer Billy Currington unveils pure, slow–as-molasses Georgia country on his self-titled debut CD. With a rich baritone soaked in country tradition, he paints a vivid portrait of the languid summer weekends he cherished while growing up in Rincon, Ga. (pop. 4,376).

He conjures up irresistibly romantic images of simpler days, when time was more abundant than money and the future was exciting and limitless. Songs such as Growin’ Up Down There and That’s Just Me depict the Friday nights he spent with friends in a field or river, listening to music from nearby trucks. However, his hometown’s image takes a more somber appearance in Ain’t What it Used to Be, which finds him leaving the town that had heretofore been his entire world after the local factory’s work moved to Mexico.

The CD’s strongest song is Walk A Little Straighter, a heart-rending song about a young boy’s literal and figurative pleas to his alcoholic father. Raised by an alcoholic father, Currington wrote the song’s chorus at age 12.

This is an impressive debut release by a young man who is just beginning to explore the depths of his soul. And, this is only the beginning.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review

Decades ago, country music stars were rural folks who sang real-life stories of poverty and hardship. They related to their audience because they had lived. All of that describes newcomer Jeff Bates and his debut album.

Raised by a sharecropper and his wife in backwoods Mississippi, Bates grew up knowing adversity and hard times. Those experiences are evident in songs such as Already Spent and Rainbow Man, the title track which reveals his multicultural heritage.

Bates co-wrote all 11 songs on the album, including his first hit single, The Love Song, which provides a personal account of life’s most precious emotion. His deep, soulful voice is reminiscent of Conway Twitty’s.

Like Twitty, Bates’ music conveys stories about love (Long, Slow Kisses), the place where he grew up (My Mississippi), and pride in his music (Country Enough), which sums up his message very well: “If you hear it on the radio and don’t turn it up, it ain’t country enough.”

If you like country music from decades ago, you should listen to Rainbow Man.

0 comments, Share your comments on this review