Bentley’s Home likely to be another hit album
Country singer Dierks Bentley performs on the Today show Feb. 7 in New York.
Dierks Bentley
HOME
Country star Dierks Bentley delivers a made-to-please new album that covers love of home, country, babies and cold beer. But somehow tractors and dogs got left out. Regardless, can’t miss choruses kick in just where they’re supposed to and certain spots in certain songs cue the stadiumwide sing-alongs.
In “Am I the Only One,” Bentley puts out a call to party. “Is there anybody out there, wants to have a cold beer, kick till the morning light?” he asks. Turns out there isn’t, at least not among the usual suspects. But even if all of Bentley’s rowdy friends have settled down, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
“Am I the Only One” squarely follows the country- and Southern-rock precedents established by Hank Williams Jr., Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker and Tom Petty. Southern rock, and ’70s and ’80s in general, continue to hold sway upon Nashville’s Music Row. “Gonna Die Young,” for instance, sounds as if it’s torn from an Aerosmith set list. Throw a little banjo, fiddle and steel guitar in the mix and it’s modern-day country music.
Bentley and his co-writers and producers expand their classic Southern-rock palette by adding latter-decade influences the Black Crowes, Georgia Satellites and U2. The grand earnestness of the latter group sweeps through Home’s title track, an anthem whose subject is nothing less than the United States of America from sea to shining sea.
Bentley’s likely cruising to another hit album with Home and its 11 newly copyrighted songs crafted by teams of songwriters. The album’s nicest surprise, though, is an older ballad co-written by one of Bentley’s favorite artists, Jamie Hartford, and Gary Nicholson. The clever, touching lyrics of “When You Gonna Come Around,” sung as a duet with Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild, tell a short story-in-song about a man and a woman hesitating at the edge of love.
Paul McCartney
KISSES ON THE BOTTOM
Following the examples of many pop and rock singers who came of age in the rock ’n’ roll era, Paul McCartney has recorded a collection of melodic American standards. Linda Ronstadt and, more recently, Rod Stewart, had great success with their standards albums, success that extended through multiple releases. But many others, including McCartney’s peers Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson, both of whom released a standards LP in the early 1970s, weren’t so commercially blessed by their projects.
McCartney’s Kisses on the Bottom, released a week before Valentine’s Day, features his interpretations of 10 classics of the kind identified with American songbook masters Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. The former Beatle’s supporting players include pianist Diana Krall, her jazz band and the London Symphony Orchestra. Johnny Mandel, a composer and arranger who worked with Sinatra, Bennett, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Barbra Streisand, Count Basie, Nancy Wilson and many more, contributes four lovely arrangements.
Kisses on the Bottom, its title derived from a line in Fats Waller’s 1935 hit, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” hits some high notes. But thoroughly well-crafted though it is, McCartney tends to treat the classics too reverently. His more often than not intimate, nearly whispered performances are too precious, overly intimate.
Even so, the warmly done “It’s Only A Paper Moon” swings short and sweet. Backed by a quartet featuring Krall’s piano and John Pizzarelli’s guitar, McCartney finally lets loose in Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” singing in full voice during a session that sounds like it was fun for everyone.
Two McCartney compositions highlight this otherwise nonoriginal disc. The minor- to major-key modulation in “My Valentine” creates the musical equivalent of sunlight breaking through clouds. Guest guitarist Eric Clapton is a nice bonus. McCartney reaches effectively into his upper register for the album’s other original, “Only Our Hearts,” a song that also contains rays of light, especially during Stevie Wonder’s unmistakable harmonica solo.
Aretha Franklin
KNEW YOU WERE WAITING: THE BEST OF ARETHA FRANKLIN 1980-1998
Even if Aretha Franklin had stopped recording in the mid-’70s, she’d still be the queen of soul. Franklin’s late ’60s run of hits for Atlantic Records encompasses such soul- and gospel-powered classics as “Respect,” “Think,” “Chain of Fools,” “I Say a Little Prayer” and “The House That Jack Built.”
In comparison to the golden discography above, it’s easy to dismiss, discount and disqualify the comeback success Franklin had in the 1980s and ’90s at Clive Davis’ Arista Records. The later recordings don’t match the earlier hits, but the best of them present a still vital Franklin in a new and commercially potent contemporary light. Unfortunately, those nasty-sounding synthesizers frequently get prominent play in the arrangements.
Nonetheless, Arista surrounded Franklin with top-flight producers, songwriters and guest stars. Her breezy Grammy-winning 1985 hit, “Freeway of Love,” features E Street Band member Clarence Clemons blowing sax, future American Idol judge Randy Jackson playing synthesizer bass and Santana’s rhythm section. “Freeway” also brought the ’60s soul star to a new generation via music-video channel MTV.
Franklin entered the rock realm with “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves,” a collaboration with Eurythmics Annie Lennox and Dave Stuart.
Major ’80s stars George Michael, Whitney Houston and Michael McDonald joined her, too, as well as Elton John, Keith Richards and Ron Wood, albeit with mixed commercial and artistic results.
As recently as 1998, Franklin collaborated with Lauryn Hill for the No. 5 rhythm-and-blues hit, “A Rose Is Still A Rose.” The 16-song Knew You Were Waiting: The Best of Aretha Franklin 1980-1998 precedes Franklin’s 70th birthday March 25.