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Hayes Carll is the new face of country music for me and this album is fantastic. Funny, outrageous, touching and just plain fun. Great songs, great lyrics and funny stories - It's all here and just in time to lift your spirits for 2009. Buy this album and keep it in the CD player 'cause you'll listen to it over and over.
Don Imus's, Imus in the Morning, is a great place to hear good music. Saw Hayes Carll on Imus in the Morning, He is Great, Just Plane Good Music, you can understand. From Older bands that are still good but don't have the top 40 stuff. I saw him on Imus in the morning. And had to go out & buy this one. This is some of the best listening music I have heard in a long time. BUY THIS, YOU WON'T REGRET IT.
The songs are witty, fun, and they just make you feel great. I think of myself as a fan of all music except country. This is the album that might break the seal. For 5 dollars an excellent buy.
Carll continues to make good on the deep Texas songwriting talent demonstrated on two previous albums. "Don't Let Me Fall" pleads for forgiveness and support in the wake of moral failure, and his cover of Tom Waits' "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" is both petulant and preternaturally knowing. The break-up of "It's a Shame" is mourned for the hope of what could have been rather than the loss, and Tom Waits' romantic Bowery sentiments are translated into rural images on "Beaumont."The album's cover art reaches back to Merle Haggard's early Capitol albums, but Carll's not as inconsolably self-deprecating as The Hag, and the twangy mix of instruments covers more ground. Better yet, producer Brad Jones and engineer Mark Addison spend that instrumental firepower in support of Carll's vocals and his witty, incisive lyrics. Fans of Van Zandt, Earle, Nelson, Kristofferson, Shaver, Waits, Bruce & Charlie Robison, and Chris Knight will find much to love here. While some may prefer the more primitive sound of his earlier albums, in retrospect they sound like demos for this more fully realized outing.The restlessness of Steve Earle courses through Carll's narratives and keenly observed portraits, but so does the irascible spark of Charlie Robinson and the tongue-in-cheek pathos of rock musician Ben Vaughn. For this third release he moves onto the Lost Highway label, and picks up the considerable backing talents of Fats Kaplin, Darrell Scott, Will Kimbrough, and Dan Baird and others. The rasp in Carll's voice can express resignation, dissipation, irreverence, cynicism and ire, but it always seems to be balanced with a wounded poet's optimism.
The latter's wit is mirrored in the story of love lost to salvation, "She Left Me for Jesus" and the performing musician's litany of horrors, "I Got a Gig." Carll's drawl collides with the freewheeling blues and nasal syllables of Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & #35" on "A Lover Like You," with the word `lover' drawn as if Tennessee Williams' Maggie the Cat sang ragged country blues. Carll stays sly, though his lyrics aren't always joking. There's plenty of fiddle and steel, but also baritone guitar, six-string electric leads, harmonium, banjo and mandolin, and it's all deftly woven into backings that are modern in reach but traditional in effect, practiced in their looseness and anchored by the emotional abrasion of Carll's voice. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]
I liked it initially, but it has grown on me even more as time has gone on. "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" is another good classic country song that would fit well in any bar room in Texas.
Carll mixes a health dose of Americana with a little outlaw country to get one of the most interesting sounds in a long time. Hayes is also a good songwriter, which is a talent somewhat lost on many Nashville new-comers these days.
Hayes Carll's newest offering, Trouble In Mind, is easily the best country album of the year and maybe in a few years. "It's a Shame" is easily my favorite song on the album and may be a song of the year candidate if country radio would ever play it.
"Drunken Poet's Dream" is a great way to start off the album and sets the stage for what is to come. A good honky-tonk song with a little edge.
And "She Left Me For Jesus" is a great tune and has already recieved some media attention.All things considered, this is just one great album. Hayes Carll just may be the next big thing in country music.
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