Consumer Guide Album

Brad Paisley: Wheelhouse [Arista Nashville, 2013]
Two or three great songs and a fair number of pretty good ones--I'm especially partial to "Karate," a bash-his-face wife-abuse song that deserves more attention than it's been getting, and "Those Crazy Christians," where Paisley fulfills his God quotient by stating his distance so admiringly it'll do evangelicalism more good than an entire sacred album. But a lot of the time he's trying too hard to say too little or trying too clumsily to say too much, sometimes even with his trusty guitar. And the LL Cool J rap is just a flat-out embarrassment. B+