Daryle Singletary - "Rockin' in the Country"

[StevePulaski]

Rockin' in the Country (2009)
By: Daryle Singletary

Rating: ★★½

Daryle Singletary is clearly hungry in Rockin' in the Country, as the album opens unlike any other album Singletary has made in his nearly twenty year long music career, and even carries itself in a manner that greatly deviates from the crooning country singer we're used to. The album opens with the titular track, which is fueled by guitar riffs, a deep, masculine voice that is exercising Singletary's baritone style, and creates something wholly different from the low-key, somber, or humbly raucous material we've come to expect from the man. It's not necessarily a bad song, but it's heavily commercialized and gives longtime listeners of Singletary a rude interruption from what they've grown to love about the singer, and newcomers the wrong impression.

Singletary returns to something more his speed on the second track of the album, "Love You With the Lights On," which is a surprisingly racy tune about a man who wants to make love to his wife with the lights on so he can embrace and admire her body, and regains some sort of traction in weepers like "That's Why God Made Me," about a boy and a girl who meet and engage in "puppy love" at a young age before growing distant and returning to one another through an unfortunate, unlikely circumstance. Other tunes like "How Can I Believe You (When You'll Be Leaving Me)" and "Real Estate Hands" sound like the kind of tunes that would be Singletary's bread and butter, but an overproduced sound combined with vocals and mixing that simply sound like they're trying to hard derail much of Rockin' in the Country.

My assumption is Singletary has grown restless at this time in his career. He has label hopped from three different venues after comfortably releasing three albums off of Giant Records, all of which beared a song or two that charted, and is trying to find his way back into the light of recognition. Singletary may have released that singing his tried and true, neo-traditional honky-tonk ballads in a delicate and simplistic manner weren't going to get him much airplay or mainstream recognition, so now, he has comprised an album that operates more like a conventional, contemporary country release. The result is easily the weakest title in Singletary's catalog, and only reminds one of his last album, the commendable Straight from the Heart, as it concludes with a more lively version of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads." If an album of original tunes makes one want more of the last album, which was predominately focused on cover songs, then reevaluations need to be done.

Recommended tracks (in order): "That's Why God Made Me," "Take Me Home, Country Roads," and "Background Noise."