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The worst thing you could say about this disc is that it sounds kind of adult-contemporary. If you were forced to slot it into a genre, that would be the nearest fit. But it avoids the slickness, the blandness, the minivan-driver-ness of much of that genre by preserving some of the pitted concrete, the blackened gum that sticks to the bottom of your shoe - or the dust of dried shit and dirt that sticks to your lungs after breathing the not-so-pure country air. Lyrics like "everybody knows that they left Paul behind the barn without his clothes" or "be still, you wretched freak...give us milk, you little pig - we'll tell you when we're through" are less than conducive to air-conditioned striving at hipness. Elements of jazz, rock, folk, even hip-hop production tricknology color the sound of the album (credit Henry and the mixing team of T-Bone Burnett, Rick Will, and Daniel Lanois). That is, if you're not careful you might make this for cool background music - but actually listening shows there's a lot more, and a lot more compelling, going on here, and you'd best pay attention. Otherwise, you'll never know whether it, like that stranger at the other end of the bar, is offering you a helping hand should you fall - or two hands, holding two sticks with piano wire stretched between them. |
