I like Slate rock critic Jody Rosen a whole lot, he is, indeed, a firm favorite of mine and his Taylor Swift interview for New York Magazine last year stands up as maybe the single best piece of music writing I read last year. But he sure over rates the tedious country rocker Eric Church. “(He) might have written a bad song once or twice, but he’s never recorded one.” Really? How about the atrocious “Springsteen” to start with?
Look at it this way: he is better than Eric Pasley but not by that much that it is a matter of life and death and while the new album has a handful of really good songs, it also has an 8 minute turkey with the worst title known to man “Devil, Devil (Prelude: Princess Of Darkness)”, a song so bad it gives Nashville a bad name and a spoken word intro so silly you just don’t wanna hot the second minute mark. Ugh. Nashville deserves better than this shit.
So what’s good? Well, “Jack Daniels” is great -unfortunately it was a coupla years ago. Here “Cold One” was nearly as good. What else? “Tallega” is a good old fashioned bromance, as good as Blake Shelton for sure. The title track has a nice head of foam if you haven’t just been listening to Drive-By Trucker. “The Joint” has a nice sinking feel.
Still, even on the goodies you are stuck with dumbass spoking word intros. What is it with that? Is that some sorta style comment or something? If so, I don’t get it at all. I fucking loath it, in fact. Plus, does he have a cold? Why does he sing through his nose?
So,yeah, Church has written a bad song or 20, he is good for four songs every 36 months, proceed accordingly.
Grade: C