BlackHawk - "Strong Enough"

[StevePulaski]

Strong Enough (1995)
By: BlackHawk

Rating: ★★½

BlackHawk's sophomore album Strong Enough, the followup to their monstrous debut album, which achieved platinum status and made them a household name for country music, is one of the most amiable and good-natured country albums I have yet to hear. Unfortunately, however, this attribute contributes to the relative indifference I can express with most of the songs on this CD. BlackHawk's style is so amiable and good-natured that it's nearly robbed of all personality, and as I was listening to this ten track album, I couldn't help but feel almost every song, its melody, and even its name, slip my mind as the CD clicked over to the next song.

Strong Enough is reminiscent of Neal McCoy's third album No Doubt About It in that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the record itself with the exception of the weight of commonality each song carried. McCoy recorded wholesome country ballads tended to emphasize the importance of hanging out, finding women, and adhering to the foundation of family that all pander to country music's tried and true principles. Even if you never heard the specific song, you still felt like you did, with only a handful of notable exceptions.

Strong Enough, however, isn't as bland. In fact, the biggest thing here is the production, which is surprisingly weighty but never bombastic. It replicates that mid-1990's sound, when ever the most mainstream songs didn't bear a lot of gloss and almost reflects the nostalgic scratchiness of a vinyl record. We open with "Big Guitar," one of BlackHawk's many singles from this album, an okay, rowdier romp from the trio, if a bit perfunctory in its lyricism ("She takes away my pain and sorrow, loves me like there's no tomorrow") and "Like There Ain't No Yesterday," a well-done, anti-country heartbreak ditty that rejects the principles of letting the past negatively effective the present. From a trio I expected to bring barroom weepers to the table, they instead brought empowering anthems to the party.

The album persists on for a blink-and-you-miss-it ten tracks, with highlights being the aforementioned "Like There Ain't No Yesterday," "Any Man With a Heartbeat," shouting out the other specific soul who will treat the narrator's woman right, and "Hook, Line and Sinker," which probably doesn't need any narrative explanation. At only thirty-four minutes, and tracks like "I'm Not Strong Enough to Say No" and "King of the World" bearing titles that make you feel like you've already heard the song, Strong Enough's impact is decidedly lesser than one would anticipate for a country album made by one of the hottest country trios at the time. There's a strong emphasis on production, and some very catchy songs intermixed with several indifferent ones, but there's a biting lack of urgency here that is evident from the way the album seems keen on settling for indifference rather than an attempt at something greater.

Recommended tracks (in order): "Any Man With a Heartbeat," "Like There Ain't No Yesterday," and "Hook, Line and Sinker."