CMT Blog: Albums

Looks like all those years with a Dixie Chick rubbed off on Charlie Robison. He may have divorced the Chicks’ Emily Robison, but it sounds like he’s married to that whole fiddle and steel and mandolin brand of music. (That said, there’s not one single banjo lick on the entire album.) Although he may consider himself too hip to be pigeon-holed as country, his new album, Beautiful Day, is countrier than most Texas country artists ever strive for.

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If you like bluegrass music, I have a couple of recommendations for you. The first is Marty Raybon & Full Circle’s This That and the Other. You may recognize Raybon as the engaging lead singer of Shenandoah, who had a batch of popular country singles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These days he’s pursuing bluegrass music full time yet the new material doesn’t stray far from Shenandoah hits like “Next to You, Next to Me” or “If Bubba Can Dance (I Can Too).” If you like those tunes, try “Everybody’s Reaching (Out for Someone)” and “Luzianna Man.” You’ll be pleased to discover that his voice still sparkles.

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Listening to Sarah Jarosz‘ album, Song Up in Her Head, I found myself soul searching on my way to work. There is something about this 18-year-old. I can’t decide if I was mesmerized by her impeccable instrumental skills, her blues-drenched lyrics or her passion. Still, she is just like any other teenage girl and loves to talk. Jarosz was so willing to chat with me that I felt like I was laughing along with my best friend.

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This summer, the album release calendar is very light, so I’m plucking a few CDs from my home collection and writing about them instead. Here are a few discs worth dusting off, with many others to follow in the coming weeks.

Demolition, Ryan Adams (2002)
Comprised of outtakes from two prior albums, this disc still offers standout ballads such as “Cry on Demand,” “Dear Chicago” and “Desire” — essential to any Ryan Adams mix tape. I don’t know if the lyrics of the lively “Chin Up, Cheer Up” are happy or not, but with Ethan Johns on drums and Greg Leisz on Dobro and steel guitar, it doesn’t matter.

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What would it take to make Ashton Shepherd an international star and get Jamey Johnson to fill a stadium? Not the influence of music critics, that’s for sure. In this short piece from the Washington Post, J. Freedom du Lac acknowledges that music critics really don’t have that much influence over the music-listening public. Critics may, on a good day, turn you on to music you’ve never heard of, but there’s only so much power a journalist has. (The irony of all of this is that du Lac is no longer the music critic for the WaPo but is now an enterprise reporter at the paper.) But what do you think? Are you influenced by what a critic says? Does a good album review make you want to download it immediately? And does a bad review make you think twice about clicking “buy album”?

Mat Kearney lives in Nashville and collaborates with local songwriters, but his new album, City of Black & White, is not a country album. Instead, he’s a young singer-songwriter with songs placed in shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Bones and Friday Night Lights. For this album, he’s toned down the urban influences and concentrated more on creating intriguing melodies with some of Nashville’s finest (yet fledgling) fringe artists like Trent Dabbs, Matthew Perryman Jones and Kate York. It’s literate but not obscure. Meanwhile, the production is interesting but never obnoxious. His music reminds me a little bit of the Fray and John Legend. Whenever I get pop albums in the mail, I usually give them a courtesy listen, then move on to something more rootsy, but I’ve been keeping City of Black & White in heavy rotation while driving around Nashville. Makes me proud to live here. If you’re curious to hear more, here’s a video for “Closer to Love.”

Yesterday, I wrote my 1,000th blog. You can see that big fat number right next to my name on CMT.com’s blog page. So I spent a completely inordinate amount of time sifting through those 1,000 blogs trying to find some kind of rhyme or reason or pattern in the way people respond. I gave up around midnight when all I had determined was that sometimes you just strike a nerve. And sometimes you don’t.

I could pour out my heart about a new album. Rave about lyrics. Rant about haters. Or I could try to put into words my devotion to Garth Brooks‘ music. I could talk nonstop about concerts and awards shows and the battles of the blondes. But in a way, this blog is a bit like the music business it’s intended to cover, because it’s really all about timing. If I wrote something particularly controversial, it could very well fall on deaf ears if, say, Taylor Swift had a new single out that day or Kenny Chesney broke his foot.

Still, you can’t help but notice when the comments for a particular blog start to rack up higher numbers than others. So I give you the top blogs, if comments matter as much as I think they do:

Mark Chesnutt made some remarks about Taylor Swift’s music.

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“It’s a Business Doing Pleasure With You.” I haven’t even heard it and I’m almost positive I will love it. That’s the title of Tim McGraw’s latest single, and it hits radio stations today (June 30). It’s also the first track released from his upcoming album, Southern Voice. Why am I so sure I will love it? Because I love word plays, and the title creates an image in my head of a man who’s tired of trying too hard to have fun with some woman. And because in all the years I’ve been listening to McGraw, I don’t think he’s ever released a song I didn’t love. It’s been way too long since he came out with Let It Go, so I’m just ready for another McGraw album, single … anything. His label people have described this new song as “up-tempo and fun … a great summer song.” As soon as I hear it, I’ll write my own seven-sentence description as well.

Rhett Miller is that rare singer-songwriter who can write lyrics about desperation, frustration, deception, etc., only to have listeners happily bouncing along with his upbeat choruses. In other words, the lyrics don’t always seem to match up with the melodies, so that’s probably why his new album, Rhett Miller, is holding up to repeated listening. For the last week or so, I’ve been stuck on “Refusing Temptation,” which is about fidelity — or not, depending on how you interpret his attachment to the girl of his dreams. Is she haunting him? Part of me thinks so, but the other part is too busy singing along to decide for sure.

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My Brad Paisley advance album is ruined. That’s how good it is. Do you remember those days when you played an album over and over and over until it started scratching and skipping? But CDs are indestructible, right? Not if it’s so good that you play the hell out of it, like I’ve done with Brad Paisley’s American Saturday Night. This is his best album ever. No doubt. Hands down. Is it because he co-wrote every single song on it? Is it because he’s the one country artist right now who can be at once hopelessly sentimental, brutally honest and laugh-out-loud funny? Or is it because since he debuted in 1999, he’s just done a lot of musical maturing?

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