…or, “He’s gone country, look at them…hey wait, this is actually pretty good!”
Triggerman at Saving Country Music, on Staind frontman Aaron Lewis’ new country album The Road:
Fundamentally, this album suffers from similar issues as Arron’s first two singles. As a country music outsider, Lewis seems to rely too much on songwriting formulas, and tends to get political on your ass in a way that comes across as pandering to demographics instead of a byproduct of sincere songwriting. But beyond those transgressions, and the “Endless Summer” single that’s clearly a play for radio attention, The Road is a hard country, steel guitar, half-time, waltz beat, honest-to-goodness honky tonk album with some surprisingly good moments.
I can’t believe I typed that last sentence, but it’s true…
If you read SCM on a regular basis, you know this is pretty high praise from him. I’ve always thought his reviews were quite fair even though I didn’t always agree. And he’s savaged Aaron Lewis before with a review that I didn’t agree with, so with the review of this album I was pretty intrigued, so I clicked on the YouTube clip of “75″…
…and to be honest, I was quite shocked at how good it was, even if I did like “Country Boy.” I honestly didn’t expect a rocker like Aaron Lewis to come up with something like that. Sure, he’s said that he’s always country, but everybody in his situation says that. This actually sounds more country than most of what gets played on “country” radio these days. That’s not really saying much, I know, but it was really, really good. I’m interested to hear what the rest of his album sounds like.
Tags: music
January 10, 2013 at 18:35 |
I always did like Staind. This song is pretty good, but the vocals-to-music ratio is all screwed up; I almost can’t hear him sing. I think that’s a leftover from his rock days too.
And I see what you did there, with the headline.
January 10, 2013 at 18:50 |
And I see what you did there, with the headline.
ROTFLMAO. That was seriously the first thing that went through my head.
January 10, 2013 at 18:56 |
Wow, that’s good. Channeling Kris Kristofferson.
And I liked Country Boy quite a lot.