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"High Mileage" is certainly an
appropriate title for this album. In a rare misstep from consistently
4, 4/12 and 5 star albums, this CD makes you feel like you have
slogged through a massive forest to get to the lovely meadow
contained within. The songs that are what the mighty AJ does
best on this album are as good as anything he's ever done. The
crap you have to trod through to hear some of these beauties
should have been left on the cutting room floor.
The current hit single from this disc,
"I'll Go On Loving You," is a tragedy. One, it is written
by the usually dynamite Kieran Kane. Two, if you ever THOUGHT
Alan could pull off a half-recited growl between repetitive country
plaintiveness and make it a sexy triumph (a la Conway Twitty's
"You've Never Been this Far Before"), well I am afraid
you're dead wrong. Only the power of AJ's name and previous hit-making
consistency have made this howler a hit. Conway made this kind
of stuff into erotically charged vocal gunpowder. Alan's take
here is Danielle Steel-esque, borderline soft-porn, and the first
time I heard this now ubiquitous song on the radio, I did not
know whether to laugh or lose my lunch all over my steering wheel.
While it has no ludicrous recitation, the
song "A Woman's Love" is cut of the same icky cloth.
(This song has the line "I have tasted a woman's love.)
"I'll Go On Loving You" has Alan sounding like he's
having reserved phone sex, as he elucidates about taking off
his lover's dress. Exactly WHAT was Al doing during his recent
separation? Hmmm????? Maybe just watching too much Jerry Springer."
"Right On the Money" again is
a misstep written by a great artist, AJ's fellow hit maker Clint
Black. This tune is unfortunately another piece of neo- western-swing
dreck of the sort that for some unexplainable reason made George
Straight a superstar in the mid-80's (Think "Right or Wrong"
and the execrable "Ace in The Hole"), before he genuinely
earned his superstar status with his instant classics like "I
Can Still Make Cheyenne " and "Carrying your Love With
Me." "Amarillo" is a pleasant little story song
that takes a rather ABRUPT lyrical departure in its last verse
in a failed attempt to tell too much coherent story in too little
time.
But, take heart AJ fans. We are out of
the forest and in the clearing comprised by the cuts on the album
that are WELL worth listening to!!
"Gone Crazy" is a brilliant wordplay
against Alan's trademark traditional instrumentation and phrasing,
that recalls some of the great songs of Merle Haggard. "Little
Man" is a great ditty about a small town's losing its "small-town"-ness
without being treacly, and "What a Day Yesterday Was"
is the kind of great, soapy ballad that AJ has made gold before.
(Think his blockbuster "Tonight I Climbed The Wall").
"Hurtin' Comes Easy" is another neo-60's weeper that
Alan pulls off with finesse.
The album's highlights are the irresistibly
catchy honky-tonker "Another Good Reason," and the
full-of-fun love ditty sure to get your feet tappin' "Dancin'
All Around It."
While AJ's missteps on this album certainly
are dramatic and disappointing, AJ is SO daggone good when he
IS good that unlike most of today's mainstream country artists,
it's worth wading through a field full of crap to get to the
gems across the fence on this album. But, for next time Alan,
could the MILEAGE to get to those songs not be quite so HIGH???
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