Daryle Singletary – Straight From The Heart

It’s been five years since twangy, expressive, neotraditionalist country singer Daryle Singleltary’s last disc, That’s Why I Sing This Way — titled for a song on that one which is referenced, with reasons, in “I Still Sing This Way”, the self-penned single culled from this new release. The new song is catchy, and charming; rather than taking the cliche Nashville-basher stance, Daryle admits he’d readily front a rock band, wear leather pants and stand in front of semi-naked girls as today’s mainstream country crowd likes — but he just can’t help sounding this twangy.

That song is also the only original on a collection which mimics the last one in choice of hoary country songs to cover, even with its guest appearances. Rhonda Vincent joined for a Conway-Loretta duet last time; here, she’s on George & Tammy’s familiar “We’re Gonna Hold On”.

When Singletary really gets hold of one, such as Twitty’s “Fifteen Years Ago”, the familiarity is superseded by the potent emotion and his sheer singing talent. Other times, we get conventionally understood and interpreted versions of the all-too-familiar “The Bottle Let me Down”, “Tiger By The Tail” and “Lovin’ On Back Streets”. With a singer as innately pleasing as Singletary — whose voice is in that winning country territory between Merle Haggard and Jon Anderson — a lot of listeners are going to find that grabby.

There are plenty of good songwriters out there who could have supplied fresh material for that voice to tackle — and there are ways to look at the chestnuts that might have made them more the singer’s own. With neither route taken, this much-anticipated outing could have been called More Of The Same — reason for only limited excitement.