#532 (Country pop) on the Country DDS.
As the outdated saying goes, warfare makes unusual bedfellows. Amid the tradition warfare that runs straight down the center of nation music like a grizzly quadruple bypass scar, the success you might need skilled in nation music’s mainstream doesn’t all the time decide what aspect you fall on. You may be Chase Rice and have a songwriting credit score on Florida Georgia Line’s huge hit “Cruise,” have a pair of hits of your individual, and nonetheless discipline a laundry listing of professional grievances towards the system.
On his new album and first impartial launch known as Go Down Singin’, Chase Rice fields not one, however two songs addressing the nation mainstream and the way it can chew up and spit out performers like Rice when it’s by with them. Perhaps he shouldn’t complain too loudly for the reason that mailbox cash from “Cruise” alone most likely makes for a good-looking passive earnings. Compared to some others, Chase Rice is a large success story.
Go Down Singin’ is sort of a continuation and a sister album to Chase’s 2023 launch I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell. They each come within the wake of his father’s dying, together with his dad adorning the earlier album cowl, and Chase in an identical pose holding Coors beers gracing this one. This additionally dovetails with the ultimate music on the album, “You in ’85,” the place Chase attracts similarities together with his pops and himself throughout a span of 40 years.
Clearly the dying of his father impressed a dramatic recalibration of priorities for Chase, and that's mirrored within the songs of this album. It’s positively extra mature and significant than his earlier stuff, identical to his final album was, however would possibly even go a step additional right here. Lori McKenna will get 4 songwriting credit on the album, and seems within the duet “That Word Don’t Work No More.” This alone ought to inform you how critically Chase Rice took the songwriting for this document.
One of these Lori McKenna co-writes is the music “Oh Tennessee” that finds Chase Rice lamenting his time within the state (and by proxy, mainstream nation), and the way it reworked him from a easy nation boy to somebody he wasn’t significantly proud of. The rootsy music “Haw River” is a couple of preacher gone dangerous, and positively not one thing you’re used to listening to from the mainstream nation set.
But as a lot as Chase Rice deserves professional reward for the 180° transformational route in his profession, it’s solely honest to characterize this album as nonetheless coming with many of the modes and inflections indicative of mainstream nation. Every music has a co-writer, or two. The songs “Numbers” and “If Drinkin’ Helped” nonetheless rely closely on list-like lyricism. “Hey God It’s Me Again” is a top quality monitor, however one you’ve heard a dozen other ways on main label releases.
“Arkansas” feels like Chase Rice attempting to put in writing a Zach Bryan music attempting to put in writing a Turnpike Troubadours music. Though you commend Chase for his efforts, in some unspecified time in the future the listener is best served going straight to the supply. Like a lot of mainstream content material, you see the plot twists coming, and generally you'll be able to end the traces earlier than they’re issued. It’s that predictability that makes mainstream nation a measure much less even in its biggest iterations, which Chase Rice actually challenges for right here.
Something else holding this album again is how the music fails to make an announcement. No query that it’s far more nation than Chase Rice 1.0. There are some cool moments within the music, just like the prolonged guitar solo on the finish of “If Drinkin’ Helped.” But it’s actually not a twangy document, and presents a form of “neither fish nor foul” side to it the place it sits in between the mainstream and impartial in a approach that will not attraction strongly to both aspect.
But don’t permit any of these critiques to make you query what your ears are listening to right here, which is a dramatic transformation from the unique Chase Rice expertise. Similar to new albums from Shawna Thompson and Miranda Lambert’s newest, mainstream artists are getting fed up, and are envious of the inventive autonomy of their impartial friends. Chase Rice isn’t copycatting, he’s simply attempting to etch out an area in music the place he may be himself. That’s arduous to not root for and champion, even when it’s not significantly your velocity.
7.2/10
