Tuesday, November 25, 2008
X
Trace Adkins
The tenth album from this self-described roughneck is one of those emotional buffets that try to be all things to all country fans. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll get bored. You'll make a beer run. You'll get home just in time for "Sometimes a Man Takes a Drink" and wonder how a guy who introduced the world to the term "honky tonk badonkadonk" just shamed you into dumping a six-pack down the kitchen sink.
"Life didn't turn out like he planned," Adkins laments as curlicues of lap steel guitar moan along in the background. "Sometimes a man takes a drink, but sometimes a drink takes the man."
It's a heartbreaker of a hook -- not to mention the complete emotional opposite of "Badonkadonk," perhaps the definitive Adkins hit. Since then, he has written a book, appeared on "Hollywood Squares," come mighty close to winning "The Celebrity Apprentice" and lent his voice to a KFC ad campaign.
This is clearly a man who likes to spread himself around, but the incessant emotional gear-shifting on "X" proves to be as exhausting as it is impressive. The album's second half kicks off with "Marry for Money," a roadhouse-ready romp in which Adkins sets his sights on a "sweet sugar mama with a whole lotta zeros and commas." Hilarious. But up next is "Til the Last Shot's Fired," cataloguing the ravages of war. The song's coda unfurls an arresting choral arrangement performed by the West Point Cadet Glee Club. Heavy. And back and forth Adkins goes, toggling between melancholy and mirth.
You have to wonder if Adkins actually likes singing the sillier songs. Elsewhere his voice is deep and robust, as on "I Can't Outrun You," a gorgeous ballad about an unflagging romance. It makes you wish this renaissance roughneck would just stay put for a while.
-- Chris Richards
DOWNLOAD THESE: "I Can't Outrun You," "Marry for Money," "Til the Last Shot's Fired"
THE FOUNDATION
Zac Brown Band
It's great to see a hard-touring, staunchly do-it-yourself group like the Zac Brown Band enjoying such success with "Chicken Fried," its current Top 10 country single. Originally recorded in 2003 and included on the Georgia quintet's self-released "Home Grown" album, the single proves that bands can still hit the road in a van and make good.
A fiddle-driven country-rocker extolling the virtues of down-home cuisine and culture, "Chicken Fried" wouldn't sound out of place on a Kenny Chesney record. Likewise "Toes" and "Where the Boat Leaves From," a couple more carefree anthems, the latter with a Caribbean lilt.
Good times abound, but in some cases, so do lyrics that border on cliche. "Cadillacs and caviar, that ain't how she rolls/Implants and tummy tucks, she sure don't need those," Brown boasts of his sweetheart on "Different Kind of Fine," a latter-day Southern rocker propelled by twin lead guitars. "It's Not OK" has bluegrass giddyup and a boom-chicka bass line. "Sic 'Em on a Chicken" offers yet more cornpone humor.
Lending the album welcome depth are "Highway 20 Ride," a weeper about the ravages of divorce, and "Jolene," a dispatch from a bereft lover's dark night of the soul. "I found myself face down in the ditch/booze in my hair, blood on my lips/a picture of you holding a picture of me/in the pocket of my blue jeans," Brown moans to a weary backbeat. Here's hoping "Jolene" is a song that Alan Jackson, whose molasses baritone Brown's resembles, has put a hold on.
-- Bill Friskics-Warren
DOWNLOAD THESE: "Mary," "Jolene"
DAY & AGE
The Killers
"Sam's Town," the Killers' hollow 2006 attempt at the Great American Rock Album, was greeted with an almost universal shrug. Bummer for them -- the Las Vegas quartet had even converted to facial hair and threadbare wardrobe to try to spark the Dust Bowls of our collective imagination. How did these guys fail to realize that the real gold mine of tragic Americana was sitting right in their own back yard?
They get smart with their third album, "Day & Age," shifting from sepia-toned desolation to fluorescent hyper-glitz, seizing on the metaphorical power of their home town with shiny, hopeful rock songs that still feel like the band might go bankrupt at any minute. Stuart Price, the producer who oversaw much of Madonna's "Confessions on a Dance Floor," gives "Day & Age" an impressive gloss and helps the band lasso a certain funkiness that had proved elusive before.
That means the Killers are the new Duran Duran and "Joy Ride" is the new "Rio." It's a slippery, jaunty affair, with frontman Brandon Flowers bellowing, "When your hopes are high and your chips are low, joy ride." The Killers spend the rest of the album soaring toward power-balladry as if on autopilot. "Spaceman" makes the most of it, offering a tale of alien abduction and a chorus that unloads its guitars and synthesizers in a burst as pristine as that spotlight on the roof of the Luxor. Viva Las Vegas.
-- Chris Richards
DOWNLOAD THESE: "Spaceman," "Joy Ride"
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