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 | No matter if one is a true believer or an disbeliever, the pleasure of listening to religious music is hearing someone proclaim his or her faith with genuine passion. Whether it's Ralph Stanley singing high and lonesome about his Christianity or Mahalia Jackson wailing low and powerful about hers, whether it's Bob Marley crying in a Jamaican patois about Haile Selassie or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan singing in Urdu about Allah, the best religious music shares the contagious, thrilling conviction that the singer's god is the most important thing in his or her life. And that passion is too often missing from "Common Ground: Country Songs of Faith, Love & Inspiration," the new anthology of gospel songs by country stars on the Sony labels. -- Geoffrey Himes (less)Sony | $3  amazon.com |
|  | The one Nashville sub-genre tthat never gets the respect it deserves is the comic-novelty song. From Jimmie Rodgers' "In the Jailhouse Now" to Tracy Lawrence's "It Only Takes One Bar (To Make a Prison)," exaggerated shaggy-dog stories and awful puns have provided country music with some of its finest moments. Joe Diffie, once marketed as a neo-traditionalist heartthrob, has found a new niche as a comic singer on Third Rock from the Sun , and his light, giddy touch with this material proves infectious. The album includes several run-of-the-mill romantic ballads, but it's the funny stuff that makes this recording special. --Geoffrey Himes (less)Artist: Joe Diffie | $0 - $2  2 Merchants |
|  | Singer-guitarist Kevin Moore, known by his slangy abbreviation Keb' Mo', has already enjoyed commercial success. He's cut radio hits like "I Was Wrong," toured with Bonnie Raitt, and won Grammys for his last two albums. Yet this time, Moore's truly nailed his blues-pop ambitions with a warm mix of sonics and songcraft. The Door wraps spare arrangements around Moore's bone-deep slide guitar and the slow-granite foundation of drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Reggie McBride. They catch the spirit of the music's simple country roots, but spin savvy moves like updating Elmore James's "It Hurts Me Too" with a hip-hop groove that flies. Moore has also penned wise, sweetly emotional lyrics. He weaves themes like class-consciousness (the star-crossed love ode "Anyway") and poverty of the spirit ("Change") into heart-tugging ballads colored by the chocolate-y Mississippi moan of his voice. Add in flourishes of electric jazz guitar and some nasty rock tones, and this tallies up as his most ambi... (less)Sony | $5 amazon.com |
|  | Perhaps if Dolly Parton looked more like Abraham Lincoln and less like Jayne Mansfield, she would get the same respect from critics and historians as Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. Parton certainly deserves it, for her gifts as a singer and a songwriter are quite similar to those of Willie and Hag--all three have at times perfected a particular regional style of country music (Parton's Appalachiana, Nelson's Texas swing, and Haggard's Bakersfield sound) until it became paradoxically universal. Parton's 1995 album, the aptly titled Something Special , is one of those rare glimpses we get at just how talented she is. The disc includes three of her best-known tunes--"I Will Always Love You," "Jolene," and "The Seeker"--from the early '70s, when she was at her songwriting peak, and supplements them with seven more recent Parton compositions in the same style. Like her older, best work, these songs boast a nongimmicky simplicity that allow her mountain background to shine through in ... (less)Sony | $2 amazon.com |
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