RSSConsumer Guide by Review Date: 2013-04-16
2013-04-16
Jonny Fritz: Dad Country (ATO, 2013) The former Jonny Corndawg doffs his cartoon face but continues to wear his cartoon voice, probably because he owns no other. Object: album that presents him as an ordinary Southern-accented male with an unusually high-strung larynx who goes to bars and forgets the garbage and bathes in the holy pool of the Mount of Venus and catches sick and drives 250 miles to get tossed from your birthday party just like any other fella. And oh yeah, who's got relationship problems so depressing that he thinks calmly about killing himself. Yet even that doesn't stop him from saying what he has to say in under three minutes, with a catchy tune to help the time pass. A-
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+