Texas Nation (#550.3) and Americana (#570) on the Nation DDS.
It’s by no means been straightforward to pigeon-hole Parker McCollum, or summarize his music profession or sound in a concise sentence. He’s a Texas artist with mainstream affect. He’s an independent-minded performer with robust business potential. Clearly he aspires to attain massive radio singles and swell his crowds at concert events. However then he frequently cites singer/songwriters like Chris Knight and John Prine as influences. There may be an underlying, principled method to his profession. But it surely’s combined with a practical, business-savvy sense of his music as a franchise.
Parker’s new self-titled album doesn’t make assessments or summations of his profession any simpler. If something, they confound them, although that’s in all probability a part of the purpose. After working with producer Jon Randall on the final two information that put Parker solidly within the High 10 of mainstream nation males, he selected to go together with veteran Frank Liddell on the brand new one, and file it in New York Metropolis in a decent window. This was after scraping the mission midway by below completely different circumstances.
McCollum has mentioned that at instances throughout the recording he questioned if he was committing profession suicide. As a substitute of merely speaking about how he needed to make Chris Knight songs for mainstream audiences, he did so by masking Knight’s “Sufficient Rope” off of Knight’s 2006 album. Parker additionally covers the well-known nation traditional “Good Time Charlie’s Bought The Blues” written by Danny O’Keefe, even when it doesn’t sound particularly like traditional nation right here.
The sound of this self-titled album is absolutely what’s most quizzical firstly. McCollum and Frank Liddell aren’t the primary, and doubtless gained’t be he final to aim to make an Americana file for the mainstream nation market which may misunderstand Americana’s grit for basic inferiority. The musical indicators are slightly too muted, distressed, mono combined, and “soiled” on this album. The solos really feel purposely sloppy and uninspired. It seems like good musicians attempting to carry out subpar as a result of that’s what “Americana” is. It’s “gritty.”
At instances, you hear devices, however they’re so buried within the combine, you possibly can’t really feel them. That is particularly evident within the guitar solo for the track “Killin’ Me,” and the little out-of-tune and out-of-time discordant tones that apparently are speculated to impart some type of natural authenticity firstly of the track “New York Is On Fireplace.” As a substitute, they simply really feel like a distraction. This album lacks presence and readability total from a fundamental sound engineering standpoint.
Parker McCollum’s sound has by no means been particularly nation. However with all of the discuss of desirous to step additional into his roots, you anticipated perhaps slightly extra metal guitar, perhaps a fiddle or two, or a minimum of any instrumentation that was outstanding, or might provide a definite sound. The track “Stable Nation Gold” doesn’t sound something like that, together with the quizzical little strings outtro.
That’s to not say the album doesn’t even have its robust factors, or that McCollum shouldn’t get credit score for trying to do one thing slightly extra offbeat for main label audiences. The opening track “My Blue” appears like Parker McCollum taking these Chris Knight influences, and at last synthesizing them right into a track of his personal. Loads of individuals die within the observe, similar to a Chris Knight saga. “Watch Me Bleed” feels nearly just like the roots model of an Oasis track. It showcases a powerful refrain, which McCollum has a knack for composing.
Parker exhibits his refrain expertise off once more within the album’s massive radio single “What Kinda Man.” If you get to the track on the eleventh slot of the 14-song album, you say, “Okay, right here’s an precise Parker McCollum track,” even when it’s the extra mainstream model of him versus the Texas one, and the manufacturing on the observe nonetheless suffers from that muted and muddy sound that besets the complete self-titled album.
If you attempt to play each side of the impartial/mainstream divide, you run the chance of not interesting to both. On this self-titled album, McCollum nonetheless has just a few songs that can do properly within the mainstream market, which is all you really want since it will represent a run of radio singles and hold the machine churning alongside simply positive. However nothing about this file goes to essentially attraction to the followers of Sturgill Simpson and Charles Wesley Godwin who weren’t already McCollum followers within the first place.
However Parker McCollum says he didn’t make this album to attraction to 1 aspect of something or one other, however to be probably the most trustworthy expression of himself. It’s the album he needed to make. We are able to solely take him at his phrase, and the album does sound higher with subsequent listens. Among the sound points turn out to be much less regarding, and a few of the writing exhibits its energy, even when the tracks on the album nonetheless really feel a bit hit and miss, similar to the profession of Parker McCollum to many.
This self-titled album in all probability is the correct illustration of Park McCollum. It rests in the course of the Nashville/Texas, mainstream/impartial divide. You simply want the sound represented these songs slightly higher.
6.8/10
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