With the thoughts Brad Paisley could be thinking he could be another Lincoln if he only had a brain. But he doesn’t and I don’t know if he ever did. The first time I heard Paisley he was opening for Loretta Lynn and his first album wasn’t out yet. I know for sure because I rushed to Tower records the day after the concert and tried to get my hands on anything he had ever released and there was nothing available.
The year was 1999 and a month later Who Needs Pictures dropped and from the very first song, “Long sermon” it was obvious the guy was gonna be huge and fast and he was. But “Long Sermon”, a smart as hell country song about wanting to be out on the boat on a Sunday while a long sermon goes on and on, “ain’t nothing gonna test your faith” Brad decided . The very next song, “Me Neither” was another witty song , this time about failing to pick up a girl.
Both of these songs winked hard at the audience but the third was a full fledged heatbreaker and between the three songs, conceptually he would be carried for years and years.
But that was then and this is nice and what were once winks are now tics, and Brad can’t sing a song without an inverted comma or a parenthesis. For years now, certainly since his worst album, the bathetic This Is Country Music, the man has been all sincere smirks and while the newbie Wheelhouse begins as good as you could wish for with more songs about southerners and sensibilities, “Southern Comfort Zone” and the instant nostalgia still got some sand in more shoes “Beat This Summer”.
And then… and then Brad writes a ton of songs which are so lyrically abysmal and stupid you wish he could find a way to write about these important subjects: wife beating, Christianity, culture, guns, racism, without sounding like a fool. “Those Crazy Christians” is one of the worst songs Paisley has ever written: it is a weird sorted of reverse perverse put down. In detailing the members of the faith, he claims they are all the same which they demonstratably are not. They aren’t even all Americans, though these Christians, going off to Africa to save the world, sure are. Compare it to Bob Dylan’s “Property Of Jesus”, a song equally, indeed more fervent than Paisley’s . But Dylan sees it through one person and points directly to a punchine: “you’ve got something better”, Dylan sang, “You’ve got a heart of stone”. The song itself includes a lovely guitar break but a cookie cutter melody.
Almost as bad as “Harvey Bodine” which finds very little use for Eric Idle as a man who finds the after effects of a heart attack an excuse not to be married to his nag of a wife, or the jazzy, terrible “Death of A Single Man” (yeah, you can read the punchline in the song name, just concentrate but not too hard.
“Karate”, about wife beating, has Charlie Daniels but not much else, “Accidental Racist”, which Alyson tore apart here a couple of days ago is worse than she claims because, well, because the song sucks.
It’s been nearly fifteen years since Brad broke through, eight years since “The World” and the man needs a rest. Enough of these too clever by half albums. If he only had a brain, he might be more than an apologist with a heart of gold, if he kept to what he knew and if he should more quality control, he could be what he thinks he is.
Grade: B-