Country Rock Elder Plays Country. Who Knew?
Paul G Woodgate
Posted On November 1, 2015
Tift Merritt must have been stoked to find Don Henley had chosen to open his first solo album for 15 years with the title track from her 2002 debut album, Bramble Rose. It’s a stab at a country credential Henley doesn’t need – a sledgehammer to crack a nut – and fails miserably when Mick Jagger enters the fray (Frey?) in the third verse. Cue car crash American accent and all credibility thrown from the train. Listen to the original by Merritt if you want to hear the soul in the song. Sadly, second track, “The Cost Of Living,” is similarly weighed down with trying too hard. A duet with Merle Haggard, it’s slightly better, slightly more cohesive.
The album doesn’t find first gear until third track, ‘Take A Picture Of This’. Why? Because it’s where Henley once again decides to write for himself instead of lining up to sup from this year’s genre du jour. With ‘Take A Picture..’ we’re back in that familiar ghost-territory that Henley’s fabulous voice inhabits so well, the grey, genre-less borders of quality songwriting that need no additional support to grab your attention. ‘Waiting Tables’ is Henley’s male take on Kacey Musgraves Blowin’ Smoke; he’s standing in the lot whilst the girl with the neon cacti sings from behind the counter. ‘No, Thank You’ is a gentrified honky-tonk with the occasional barbed line on the state of the States and ‘Praying For Rain’ is ecology 101 through a busted Farmer’s eyes. All three are good, but halfway through the album it’s a struggle to know where the real Henley is in amongst the ‘It’s my Country album, folks’ signposts.
Thankfully, the second half strikes a richer vein. Like ‘Take A Picture..’, ‘Words Can Break Your Heart’ might have made 89s The End Of The Innocence, ‘That Old Flame’ punches above its weight and his duet with Dolly Parton on the Louvin Brothers ‘When I Stop Dreaming’ wouldn’t get kicked out of a Nashville B&B for overstaying its welcome. ‘A Younger Man’s second verse is honest about the period of life the singer finds himself in – ‘..the merchants in the marketplace / they’re selling fantasy / It’s a trick of light and shadow / It’s not reality / It’s just a faded photograph / Of the man I used to be‘. Closer ‘Where I Am Now’ is punchy, belligerent and, given the man’s history, a more than acceptable valediction.
It’s a mixed up world where one of the original country-rockers feels the need to circle the wagons on new material, call in the genre’s big-hitters (I haven’t mentioned Trisha Yearwood, Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, Vince Gill, Lee Ann Womack, Martina McBride, Lucinda Williams and Alison Krauss, but they’re all in here too) and over-do the country-by-numbers elements. It’s equally difficult to imagine Henley’s quality control allowing a bad song to escape into wider circulation, but Cass County as a unit only just stacks up. That it does has a lot to do with that voice and songwriting chops earned over five decades.
N.B This review was first published on Poor Little Fish on November 1 2015.
