RECORDINGS Quick Spins
RECORDINGS Quick Spins
Tuesday, October 17, 2006; Page C05
LONG TRIP ALONE
Dierks Bentley
  Country singer Dierks Bentley performing last year. His "Long Trip Alone" ranges from alt-country to roots rock. (By Rusty Russell -- Getty Images) |
One of the entries on Dierks Bentley's résumé has him as a researcher looking through the video archives of country music performers for the old TNN. Those files must have stopped about 1990 because there really isn't much of country music's early vintage in his sound, save for the banjo, mandolin and pedal steel.
On "Long Trip Alone" Bentley delivers an agreeable and diverting disc that comes dangerously close to Nashville's anathema -- alternative country -- save for the few "big" songs aimed squarely at commercial radio.
"Every Mile a Memory" and "The Heaven I'm Headed To" are two such ballads, but instead of slowing things down they stand out for their four-square arrangements and Bentley's just-gravelly-enough vocals.
The best songs are when the Phoenix native plays fast and loose with his past-life experiences in rock and bluegrass (before poring over those TNN videos). With the help of Nashville's coolest country-bluegrass pickers, those rascally Grascals, Bentley flaunts his empowerment as country's "next big thing" by handing in roots-rock numbers such as "Can't Live It Down," "Free and Easy Down the Road I Go" and "Band of Brothers."
But the song that plays to all of Bentley's, the Grascals' and producer Brett Beavers's strengths is "That Don't Make It Easy Loving Me," a mawkish title for a mirthful hit in the waiting.
DOWNLOAD THESE: "Can't Live It Down," "That Don't Make It Easy Loving Me"
-- Buzz McClain
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