When Tim McGraw promotes an album on Instagram, you sit up and take notice. This gem of an album from the Nashville-based artists behind heavy-weight tracks like, ‘Girl Crush‘ and ‘Your Side of the Bed‘ packs a punch. When the Taylor Swift-penned ‘Better Man’ was released at the end of 2016, high expectations were set, come 2017 we were not disappointed. Swift’s eye for a true country hit has clearly not died
The band are breaking expectations at exactly what a successful country group should be, going from strength to strength, increasing rather than decreasing in success as they near their fifties and finally appear to have found their true groove. Combining a sense of bohemian hippy chic with true soulful country and those harmonies that put any audio-tune users to shame, they capture all the emotions that bring many to country music in the first place. For those who are falling out of love with country, fall in love again.
From ‘Better Man’ the rest of the album reads like an A-Z of the strength that put Little Big Town onto the country map in the first place, from the catchy – and at times pointed to the point that it could become a middle-finger song for scorned lovers and cheated friends – ‘Happy People’ to the more contemplative ‘We Went to the Beach.’ The band members themselves – Fairchild, Schlapman, Sweet and Westbrook – only have three writing cuts across the album, singles that don’t make up the bones of the album, unfortunately but form the more surprising and wacky moments, including ‘Night on Our Side.’ While often the weirder points pack a punch, here they fail to pull their weight, still the force of the other numbers on the album keeps the record from sinking. Closing the album, the final three songs read as a lesson in heartbreak and are as powerful as they are thought-provoking – if only to make one reconsider Brothers Osborne, who penned the finale.
If you were doubting the trip to Royal Albert Hall this October, you will be proven wrong with every listen. These stalwarts of country music prove that the best is not just found on the top of the wave of music that has wrought transatlantic success and there are still many gems of Nashville that remain largely undiscovered across the pond.
Track List
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Happy People
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Night On Our Side
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Lost In California
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Free
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Drivin’ Around
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We Went To The Beach
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Better Man
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Rollin’
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Don’t Die Young, Don’t Get Old
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Beat Up Bible
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When Someone Stops Loving You
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The Breaker
