Try as he might, Bill Kirchen is no Alan Jackson.<\/p>\n
While other artists have successfully merged the worlds of
\ncountry and pop music together, Kirchen’s latest disc
\nRaise A Ruckus<\/i> shows that even the best of intentions don’t
\nalways go well.<\/p>\n
Kirchen might not be a well-known name to some people, but he
\ncould be accurately be described as a new-wave country artist.
\nWhile he still occasionally uses instruments like steel guitar and
\nfiddle in the mix, he’s less interested in maintaining the cowboy
\ncharisma than he is with putting out music that bridges several
\ngenres. (Obviously, other artists have had success with this
\nstrategy; Billy Ray Cyrus comes to mind.)<\/p>\n
And there are times on
\nRaise A Ruckus<\/i> where that strategy works well for Kirchen.
\n“Girlfriend,” the album’s lead track – co-written with his wife
\nLouise – is a wonderful track that tells of one man’s desire to
\nkeep the passion of young love alive even as the number of
\nanniversaries grows. (The accordion work of Flaco Jimenez on this
\ntrack is exceptional, making me wish he had been featured more on
\nthis album.) The Kirchens take turns in front of the microphone on
\n“True Love’s The Treasure,” another wonderful song; Louise Kirchen
\nreminds me a bit of Katy Moffatt. Other tracks worth checking out
\ninclude “Big Hat\/No Cattle,” “Little Bitty Record” and
\n“Dreamworld”.<\/p>\n
The problem is that when Kirchen misses the mark on
\nRaise A Ruckus<\/i>, he misses it by a country mile. After the
\nwonderful opening of “Girlfriend,” “Fly On Your Jacket” comes
\nacross as a slap to the face of the listener. It’s not as
\nwell-written of a track, and it’s not as well executed; Kirchen
\nsounds a bit lifeless on this one. Other tracks, like “She’s A Yum
\nYum,” just don’t show themselves as being anything special to the
\nlistener, and are quickly forgettable.<\/p>\n
It’s not that Kirchen is new at this sort of thing; he has
\nseveral albums to his credit. But where I think
\nRaise A Ruckus<\/i> goes wrong is that Kirchen doesn’t rely
\nnearly enough on the magic of his backing band, and tries to cast
\nthe spell with his own performances. Sometimes, it works;
\nsometimes, it doesn’t.<\/p>\n
\nRaise A Ruckus<\/i> is an okay country-pop album, but if it only
\nhad a little more of the magic that makes the exceptional tracks
\nstand out, it would be something to get worked up about. As it
\nstands, it’s a “for the fans” disc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7470],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-39147","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bill-kirchen","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39147"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}