RIYL: Lady Antebellum, Little Big Town, Rascal Flatts
You can’t review a country album anymore without discussing where it fits in the “real country” versus “country pop” spectrum; the debate over what constitutes the real stuff has been raging since the rhinestone cowboy days, and now that Rascal Flatts is the top-selling act in the genre – and the closest country radio gets to trad fare is fauxdowns from rootin’ tootin’ biceps barers like Toby Keith – country seems poppier than ever.
It’s got to be vexing for listeners who like their music nitty, gritty, and dirty, but country music doesn’t have to be “real” to be really entertaining, and Sugarland’s ongoing bid for crossover success is a case in point. They’re nominally a country band, but their music has always had a strong pop component, and it’s really come to the fore over their past couple of releases, 2008’s Love on the Inside and its covers-heavy live follow-up, Live on the Inside. What can you say about a platinum Nashville act that leaves room on a live album for covers of “The One I Love,” “Love Shack,” “Nightswimming,” Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” and Pearl Jam’s “Better Man”? They’re either desperate for broader appeal, or they’re trying to make a point about the arbitrary nature of genre boundaries in the first place.
Based on the savvy songwriting and slick, airless production on display in the band’s fourth studio set, The Incredible Machine, it seems safe to assume there’s a little of both at play. Sugarland members Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles have broad musical backgrounds, and they muddy the waters between pop and country more artfully than most; unlike, say, a Rascal Flatts record, you don’t get the sense you’re listening to a pop album that’s been retrofitted with fiddles and pedal steel to appease the county fair crowd. Instead, Machine feels like the work of a band whose singer just happens to have a gigantic, full-throated country holler for a voice – sometimes it’s the focal point of the music, and sometimes it isn’t.
On the other hand, the album’s title is perhaps a little more apt than Sugarland intended. It’s supposed to be a reference to, y’know, the human capacity for marvelous things, but it also makes sense as a statement about how the album sounds – like it was squeezed out of the same denim-coated Velveeta factory that gives us Kenny Chesney records. It’s loud and glossy to a fault, and it’s the kind of record that aspires to bigness even when it isn’t necessarily deserved. This is probably partly a reflection of Nettles’ massive voice, but there are also moments when you can feel Sugarland straining for arena-filling pop profundity, and it’s distracting. (Example: the deafening, all-cards-on-the-table clatter that closes the opening track, “All We Are.”)
It’s a formula that works, obviously – check Sugarland’s RIAA certifications for proof – and it’s hard to fault Nettles and Bush for swinging for the bleachers, especially in such a grim industry climate. Still, the album it adds up to is one that, while certainly entertaining, doesn’t resonate on the level you sense they were aiming for. An impressive machine, surely. Incredible? Maybe next time. (Mercury 2010)
