Lori McKenna - Unglamorous
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Lori McKennaEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-08-14
Music Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Soundtracks:
- I Know You
- Unglamorous
- Your Next Lover
- I'm Not Crazy
- Falter
- Witness To Your Life
- Drinkin' Problem
- How To Survive
- Written Permission
- Confetti
- Leaving This Life
Free Music Notes for Unglamorous
Free Music Review: Mixed Feelings
Hit: 4 Stars
Lori McKenna's mixed feelings in her often very strong writing are about men, marriage, and relationships. My mixed feelings about this CD concern whether a polished Nashville sound produced by Tim McGraw is the right showcase for those songs. In the end, I think not for the bright but predictable arrangements more often undercut instead of enhance the emotions of McKenna's writings. Maybe being discovered by country superstars and having your first major label release is a mixed blessing. Still, there are plenty of keepers here including the title track and its unabashed celebration of love on a tight budget; Your Next Lover; the terrific Drinkin' Problem; and Confetti. Her shout out in the liner notes to Mary Gauthier makes me want to check out her earlier work too.
Unglamorous Poster
Fans of Faith Hill and Tim McGraw will flock to Massachusetts singer-songwriter Lori McKenna's fifth album for obvious reasons--McGraw coproduced it with his longtime shaper Byron Gallimore, Hill recorded three of McKenna's songs for Fireflies, and McKenna snared a guest slot on McGraw and Hill's 2007 tour. But longtime McKenna followers may approach this--her first album recorded expressly for a major label--with trepidation, fearing the commercial push has tamed the fearlessness and precision of her writing and diminished the quiet power of her folkie vibe. Well, Unglamorous is, indeed, different from her previous efforts--the lyrics often move beyond McKenna's dark and gritty blue-collar world, and her sound gets a fuller production, with a noticeably tougher edge in her Everywoman tonality. But McGraw and Gallimore have taken pains to only boost McKenna in the marketplace, not radically change her style. The radio-friendly title song (cowritten with hitmaker Liz Rose) is an autobiographical portrait of McKenna as a plumber's wife and the mother of five, for example, and if she sounds overly joyous about the virtues of middle-class struggles ("Curtains faded/Threadbare rugs/Real life/The baby stayed up all night"), millions of people can relate to that kind of life and be buoyed by the commonality. Still, there are plenty of songs that revisit McKenna's starker themes: "Drinkin' Problem," to which McGraw contributes harmonies; "Falter," about how the town bum got that way, with Hill's gorgeous and impassioned soprano lending emotional strength; the devastating "Leaving This Life," about McKenna's mother, who died when her daughter was six; and a passel of well-crafted and intense songs about a marriage in trouble. The most interesting commercial forays come back to back early in the sequence. If "I'm Not Crazy" is a giddy love song on an endorphin high, its predecessor, "Your Next Lover"--the album's best cut--hauntingly chronicles a romantic throw-over in sparse but potent detail, laced with black humor ("I saw her out in the parking lot/And any plans you had you can break"). As on past albums, McKenna occasionally references high school as a watershed moment. But Unglamorous clearly shows that the 36-year-old has graduated. --Alanna NashCountry Music CDs
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