Dixie Chicks - Home

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Free Music Notes for Home

Free Music Review: The Girls are Back Home and in Their Stride
Hit: 5 Stars

Home is the Dixie Chicks third release since they exploded upon the Country music scene in 1998 with their debut album Wide Open Spaces. I fell in love with Wide Open Spaces' beautiful blend of music, voice, and lyric; the album touched me in ways I never would have expected. Not so with the Chicks next release, Fly. I had and have very little good to say about the CD, and I thought the Chicks had lost their way. But now they're back on track with Home and once again that instant connection I felt with them on Wide Open Spaces is back.

Home is an eclectic intermingling of bluegrass, country and folk that not only showcases the groups' talents as songwriters and instrumentalist, but brings into sharper focus the rich harmonic quality of the union. The girls are back in rare form, and their country roots are glowing.

The CD starts off strong with the addictive Long Time Gone, and slows down thereafter, but picks up again for White Trash Wedding, then slows again into a comfortable grove. The CD picks up again with Tortured, Tangled Hearts, and slides into the Chicks first instrumental piece, Lil' Jack Slade, a toe tapping, hay stomping, square dance inducing habit forming romp down country lane and back again.

While most of the tracks on the CD were outstanding musical fair, a few stood out and touched my emotional soul, and pulled upon my ever elastic heartstrings. Track number three, Travelin' Soldier was one such song. Perhaps it is because I was in the Navy for fifteen years and know well the dark well loneliness can leave in a young man's heart when he is thousands of miles from anything resembling home. Just a word or two from someone soft, someone familiar, a sweet beautiful face burned into the iris of your heart is all it takes to make you feel whole, make you feel human. The theme of the song is all too familiar: a young couple falls in love on a soldier's all too brief stopover in anywhere America. The letters sail across time and space until the soldier finds himself in Vietnam and his young life is cut way too short...

Although a familiar theme, the song is fresh and engaging, with folding melodies and harmony's that call to mind the wind swept hills overlooking San Francisco Bay as a lone Navy ship slips through the calm reflecting waters out of the bay on its way to deployment. The accompanying musical score is a wonderful blending of quite respectful guitar, banjo, and fiddle, intertwining with the words to convey a message all too fitting for our current American tale.

Track number five White Trash Wedding as one might be able to deduce from the title is quintessential rural Country. While the title might offend the closed minded few, I applaud the Chicks for having the courage to include the song. The song itself is a light, fun, engaging romp which pokes musical fun at hillbilly stereotype. In other words, its just harmless fun.

Track number seven More Love is another song I found particularly touching and poignant. The song speaks to the ever tenuous, ever elastic, ever frustrating, ever flowing relationship between man and woman. The tune is a brilliant fusion of good ole fashioned country twang and believe it or not, a calming Irish lilting melody that begs one to close your eyes and let the music carry you away.

Track number eleven Goodspeed (Sweet Dreams), is a tune dedicated to the smallest, most precious among us: our oft frustrating, but always delightful, and life affirming children. The tune is a sweet, touching little number that could easily be sung as a nightly lullaby into little ears thirsting for beauty, poured into little souls searching for comfort, and little hearts longing for a parent's special one-of-a-kind love.

All-n-all this is a terrific CD, but if I have to level one criticism at the CD it would be that Natalie Maines' voice is not always as strong as it could be, and at time is strains to the point of annoyance. Rest assured, these moments are few and far between but they are present.

Since the Dixie Chicks burst upon the musical landscape in 1998, they have traversed a fine line between country and pop music. There has always been a quality to their tunes that allowed for an almost seamless melding of contemporary country and popular top 40 fair. As a result they have been accused by the "critics" of not being exactly true to their musical root. With the release of Home the Dixie Chicks plant their six feet and three harmonizing voices squarely in county's backyard hopefully silencing the critics in the process who would question their country credentials. In the final analysis, Home is a down-to-earth, heartfelt, pleasing blend of bluegrass, folk, contemporary & traditional country, with just enough sparks to continue the Chicks cross-over success.

- Track Listing -

01. Long Time Gone
02. Landslide
03. Travelin' Soldier
04. Truth No. 2
05. White Trash Wedding
06. A Home
07. More Love
08. I Believe In Love
09. Tortured, Tangled Hearts
10. Lil' Jack Slade

11. Godspeed
12. Top Of The World

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