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"Call Me Crazy" album reviews; Out Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
Topic Started: Oct 7 2008, 12:53 PM (2,952 Views)
Whoa-mack
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A new one from Nashville Scene:

Crazy for Trying
Lee Ann Womack, country radio and the 't' word
By Michael McCall
Published on October 23, 2008

Lee Ann Womack's new single, "Last Call," could be a reply to George Jones' "I Always Get Lucky With You." In both, a guy who habitually ends his nights in bars tends to phone the same woman at closing time. In Jones' song, he characterizes the moment—in his bluest, most slurring tone—as a lifeline that saves him from further descent. Womack knows the woman would see it differently.

In Womack's song, when the guy calls, the woman recognizes the number on her caller ID. Only this time, she doesn't answer. Instead, she visualizes the scenario: The bartender just announced it was closing time, and the guy is cradling a final glass of Johnny Walker Red as he realizes he's going home alone. So he dials her number, because, as she sings, "I'm always your last call." The lyrics eventually turn the phrase around, as the woman promises herself that this indeed will be his last call—at least to her.

Womack performs the song with sensitive restraint, pouring emotion into a few key phrases, just as Jones did on his 1983 hit—one of Jones' standards that define what many country fans today consider as classic country music. Womack's voice is just as effective and just as good at conveying the combination of pain and strength that the lyrics ask of her.

Likewise, the musical arrangement provides a good example of how Nashville can update country traditions without losing their emotional heft. Just as Jones' producer Billy Sherrill blended steel guitar and country chord progressions with orchestrated strings and elegant piano, producer Tony Brown and Womack use a similar mix of old and new elements to create something powerful and fresh.

The same holds true throughout Womack's exceptional new album, Call Me Crazy. She and her veteran producer combine traditional and contemporary ideas into spare, breathing arrangements that add nuance to the real-life dramas of Womack's well-chosen material.

Womack's love for traditional music occasionally steps to the foreground. There's the mournful fiddle solo that opens "The Story of My Life," the steel guitar that shadows her vocal melody in "Either Way," the old-school chord progression of "If These Walls Could Talk," and the laid-back Texas waltz rhythms of "Everything but Quits," her duet with George Strait.

But those are shadings. For the most part, Womack and Brown focus on gentle washes of orchestrated strings, liquid chords on pianos and electric keyboards, and dispersed rhythms that bring a sophisticated maturity to these songs. It's a combination that Womack has worked hard at perfecting, and once again she makes it work with amazing acuity.

From her introduction 11 years ago, Womack has been heralded for remembering that country music has a rich past that pre-dates the Reba/Garth/Shania revolution. Her old-school moves have won her critical favor and, at times, even commercial acclaim. But it has also led to a backlash by purists when she dares to enter contemporary territory; just as often, she's struggled with radio programmers, who have sometimes embraced her and sometimes let her stumble.

Womack understands as well as anyone the difference between traditional country and what she does. The older style still flourishes today, even if country radio ignores it. Sunny Sweeney, from Austin, resembled a young Womack on her Big Machine Records debut. More pointedly, Houston's Amber Digby and her band, Midnight Flyer, create Southwestern dance-floor country with all the gusto of a foamy head of beer. Her new album, Passion, Pride and What Might Have Been, is the place to go for those who think good country music ended when Ray Price stopped recording shuffle rhythms.

But Womack strives to make country music that acknowledges the past without living in it, just as Jones did in the '70s, George Strait in the '80s and Alan Jackson in the '90s. That's why she moved from Texas to Nashville—just as Digby, a Nashville native, moved to Texas to sing her kind of country.

All of which underscores what a minefield the term "traditional" can be. As with "punk" among rock fans, "organic" among health-food enthusiasts or "family values" among conservatives, the term is aimed specifically at those who seek it out. But, as any marketing whiz will attest, code words that draw passionate responses can repel as well as attract. Attach the term "traditional" to a song, and a big-time country radio programmer will respond the same way a gay couple would to a politician espousing a "family values" platform.

Lee Ann Womack appreciates the term's double-edged nature. Now that Patty Loveless no longer records for a major label, Womack represents the most tradition-friendly female artist still likely to get played on corporate country radio. But the dilemma this presents has surfaced repeatedly through her career.

She first drew attention by releasing several of the most hardcore country songs to reach radio in the '90s, including the ballad "Never Again, Again" and the sassy "I'll Think of a Reason Later." But she achieved her greatest success when she shifted toward the contemporary in 2000 with the award-winning hit "I Hope You Dance." She also weathered her biggest career letdown with her most strident pop-country move, the 2002 album Something Worth Leaving Behind.

Since then, she's concentrated on finding a way for tradition-based music to fit into modern country's pop-flavored format. Call Me Crazy certainly succeeds creatively—let's hope radio sees the potential for these songs to bring a needed depth to the format as well.

-CF
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Alright, I'm going to post my review of Call Me Crazy right here. It's going to kinda long, so sit down and enjoy your read. I don't normally do long detailed postings like unless it's for my blog :

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Call Me Crazy by Lee Ann Womack (Released 10.21.08)
Review by CF

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If anybody knows me well, you know I'm a big Lee Ann Womack fanatic, and I've been waiting, intensely (and surprisingly somewhat patiently), for new music from my favorite female Texan songbird. After the unquestionable masterpiece that 2005's There's More Where That Came From was and is (and all her previous works), I was expecting the follow-up album to be just as good, or even better, though I knew it would be challenging to accomplish the same triumph.

Back in late 2006, when fans were hungry for more L.A.W. music, a new single was released, called "Finding My Way Back Home" (buy on iTunes and listen to it here), and it was met with mixed reviews, but most people seemed to be disappointed and yearned for the more traditional sound that There's More and her past music had given to us. "Finding" comprised of a different and more Caribbean pop-country uptempo sound (a sound not too unlike one of her past radio singles, "Ashes By Now"), and people and radio did not flock to support it a whole lot. I personally think it's a good song, and I did what I could to promote the single and I thought the music video was pretty cool. I just think it failed in comparison to "I May Hate Myself in the Morning" and the other more recent songs she had, and people were expecting more like that, and songs that were not so mainstream-sounding like other "country" artists' music.

Anyway, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on what you think) that single bombed, and led to a change of course and a big delay of a new album being released (which would have had the same title as the single). Lee Ann was not fully satisfied with the tracks that were recorded for that project, so a systematic evaluation had to be carried out (I like the way that sounds haha), and most of the originally planned songs were cut from, what would come to be, this latest album project, Call Me Crazy, and new tunes would take their place.

From the songs that I heard and that were taken off, I will miss most of them (a version of Cindy Walker's "You Don't Know Me", a remake of Randy Rogers Band's "Down and Out", a very traditional cheating song called "Hide and Go Cheat", a co-written state-pride ballad titled "Take Me Back to Texas", a remake of Waylon Payne's"Her"...). There were a few others rumored to be on the album (you can read about them here), but one that I'm glad was left off was a cover of Johnny Rodriguez's "Love Put a Song In My Heart" (not the greatest song). All in all, even though those gems may be hidden forever, we all won out in the end with this new record.

The track that introduces us to this new album is the first radio single, "Last Call". What absolute perfection and a stunning way to make a comeback again for Lee Ann. The song is, of course, about a man sitting alone at a bar who has a tendency, when he drinks too much, to phone up his past flame when the bar is closing down, and cry his sweet nothings. The girl he calls is smart enough to know that he only calls her when he's lonely and intoxicated and wants to be picked up. The jerk continues to burn her just like that Johnnie Walker Red he just downed. My mom commented to me that my dad was that way when he couldn't find anybody else to deal with him or take care of him, so in a way, it's relatable. I think thst "last call" double meaning is very clever and the song was written so well. Brilliant lyrics, vocals, and production. Classic Womack with a classic theme that's not too often told by woman on today's country radio. The music video, which is set in New York City is just as excellent, though the only thing that bothers me is that the guy does find another girl to go home with, just as the always-burned-ex shows up in a cab to "catch him when he falls", which is exactly the opposite of what the lyrics say. I think the female in the song is stronger-willed than that and based on her experience with the guy, doesn't want to deal with that kinda craziness anymore, so she wouldn't do that (except maybe in a moment of weakness and hard-core denial). Anyway, L.A.W. chose just the right song to get her back into the spotlight with fans and critics (and hopefully, radio plays it more, because it just hit the top 30). It's one of the highlights of the album.

The second track is "Either Way", which is about a marriage in a heap of trouble, just on the edge of d.i.v.o.r.c.e. Lee Ann, of course, with her super-emotional vocals, lays her message across the table and confronts her husband of the issue at hand. The production is a cross between traditional country and R&B. I like it a lot. This one is the only song that survived from the previous planned album release, too.

The next track is "Solitary Thinkin'", which is written by Lee Ann's friend and country artist, Waylon Payne. I first heard this on an album leak on Lee Ann's official website a few weeks ago, and I enjoyed it. It's a song that's basically the opposite of "Last Call", still from a woman's point of view, but she's the one doing the "solitary thinkin' and lonesome drinkin'" at the bar (I just love that phrase...haha) and with that heartache. Production wise, it's quite different than what Womack's done before. It immediately made me think of the production on Alan Jackson's Like Red On a Rose album, with its bluesy, R&B, kinda funky groove to it, like on Alan's song, "Don't Change On Me" (which coincidentally or not, Lee Ann contributes her harmonies to). The only song I can think of that is reminiscent of this, musical-arrangement-and vocal-wise, from her catalog is her remake of Patsy Cline's "She Got You". This is definitely one of the highlights of the album for me. I still think her cover/remake of Waylon Payne's "Her" (or "Him" as she, renamed it) would have been excellent to add, but it didn't make the cut. No worries because "Solitary" is groovy, in its own right.

Number four is "New Again". I approve the message to this song: making something old into some new again (maybe it's the environmentalist/conservationist in me? lol). This is one of the four songs that Lee Ann co-wrote, and it is pretty good. Overall, I can't quite place it, but I think there are some weak parts in the song, which makes it my least favorite song on the album. Her vocals are beautiful, though I'm thinking that this song could have used a more exciting production. It is more acoustic-sounding than the other songs, I guess, and that's usually a good thing, but I would have liked a little more.

The fifth track is "I Found It In You", which is definitely the most mainstream country radio-friendly song on the CD. The chorus is somewhat heavy on the drums and guitar like most pop-country songs. In fact, production-wise, it's basically a pop love song, but Lee Ann can do those quite well, too. It's kinda with "When You Get to Me" on the last album. Seemed out of place, but it's a great song. The lyrics in "Found" are about how people find their main reason for going on with various things, but she herself found her motivation through love. I love Lee Ann's Texan accent, so I couldn't resist this one, and I love the way she sings "youuuuuuu" haha. Her voice is what makes the song country, and her delivery, of a song that would sound cheesy with anybody else, sells this.

"Have You Seen That Girl?" follows as song number six. I've seen reviews mention that this one is similar, lyrically, to "Twenty Years and Two Husbands Ago", in that it's like a personal diary entry that looks back on the past and the directions her life has taken. Both songs were co-written by Womack (and Dean Dillon and Dale Dodson), and both show the same honest conviction and emotion that conjures regrets and wrong decisions made in life. "Girl" may not be the better of the two, but it's plenty good and I am loving the use of aching steel guitar in the chorus. It's full of Tammy Wynette-like spirit throughout.

Now, onto "The Bees". I gotta say: this is one of the reasons that a new album tracklist was a good idea... just might be my favorite song on the album. I listened to co-songwriter's, Natalie Hembry's version of the song on her myspace and wow, that really made me excited for this (her's is a bit folksy and has less drum). It's pretty cool how Keith Urban joined Lee Ann as the background vocals. "Bees" is very relaxing and hopeful in its lyric. A child dreams about a better life in the future, one that isn't so depressing, and she seems to find her calling in the simplicity of bees. I may not have worded that the best way, but the song is just like sweet poetry and just mesmerizing (even though, I may not be fond of bees, though their honey is good). I think this could be a big hit for Lee Ann if she released it. It's not radio friendly, but for some reason, it seem like it'd work, especially with Urban's name on it. The usage of the drums may be slightly too much, depending on what you think - that's what I thought on my first listen some weeks ago - but now I'm loving all of the production. The fiddle and steel guitar is beautiful. Pretty alternative country, if you ask me. Beat-wise and I guess, mood-wise, it is similar to Chely Wright's stunning "The River". If you're gonna check out just one song on this album, listen to "The Bees". I think fans of country, traditional and mainstream, would appreciate it equally.

Name-checking Keith Whitley, Hank Williams Sr., and Johnny and June Carter Cash, "I Think I Know" continues on with track number eight. Based on the 30-sec clips I heard the night before the release date of Call Me Crazy, this is the song that perked my ears up the most. It reminds me of the '90s Lee Ann and sounded so country, traditional yet modern. The lyrics claim that not only the alcohol and old age killed these country legends, but it was the pain and sadness that they sung about so well that was the main culprit. Heartache is a real slow fatal shot to the heart and can be stronger than other killers. Lee Ann's voice shines throughout, just like the mandolin in the production. Wes Hightower adds his great harmonies.

"If These Walls Could Talk", the ninth song, is the third that Womack had her hand in writing on. Pure traditional hard-core country at its best! If the purists had to choose one, they'd most likely go with this one. This lonesome and pain-charged tune sounds like something that would be on Womack's second album, Some Things I Know, and it similar to "When the Wheels Are Coming Off" in its style and aching lyrics. The house that sheltered all this broken love and fiery relationships could not bear to stand its contents. Just like Patty Loveless, not many can sing so well about lonesome and heartbreak.

Now, again, Womack is given another immense double-shot of fun in her career with another duet record with country music's best, and fellow Texan, George Strait, on track #10, with "Everything But Quits". I was thrilled to find out about their second duet, because as a huge fan of both (Strait is my number one) and my dream that they'd duet together someday, their first duet, "Good News, Bad News" was good, but failed my expectations somewhat. When I saw some reviews that compared "Quits" to George and Tammy's duets, I was even more stoked to hear it, and even more so, because Lee Ann co-wrote their duet like the first one. Lee Ann is one of two women who have ever recorded a duet with Strait (the other, of course I mentioned in the last paragraph: Ms. Loveless), so to have two duets is remarkable and very lucky. When I first heard this duet, I admit, I was slightly disappointed (I'm picky lol), because I guess I was expecting something way pure traditional country like "Murder On Music Row" or something. I'm totally fine with it now and enjoy it a lot. It's not the type of song you hear everyday, and that Nashville/Countrypolitan sound mixed with traditional makes this a classic. Now, when I listen to it, it just makes me smile and brightens my mood up. They sound incredible together with the steel, fiddle, strings, and piano (does that fiddle kinda remind anybody else of Alan Jackson's "Right On the Money"?). Classy song and optimistic.

With #11, we're back to sad songs lol... Lee Ann's version of "The King of Broken Hearts", which is a cover of Strait's 1992 tune, is fantastic, in my opinion. I wouldn't necessarily call it "better" because you can't outshine a king, but it's a nice satisfying tribute to the man. I'm sure when she sang it for him at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he loved it.

The closing and twelve track is "The Story of My Life", which includes background vocals by Lee Ann's ex-husband, Jason Sellers, and their daughter, Aubrie, making it even more personal and meaningful. I can see how this is similar to "I Hope You Dance" in message, and it has mainstream appeal, but the thing about this one is it sounds more to the side of traditional country mixed with some contemporary arrangement. Definitely more fiddle and steel than "Dance", and more simple. You can hear the more pop-style to it later on in the song, but no denying it's a country song. The message is hopeful and like good advice, can never do you wrong.

On my first listen of the whole album when I received it, I admit, I was slightly disappointed. I was expecting a twin or more to the previous album, but that's a hard feat to obtain. I'm realizing that after more listens and really soaking it all in, I truly appreciated it and enjoyed it more and more (it took me a while to do the same with her Something Worth Leaving Behind album). Just like with the album cover. When I first saw it, I seriously thought "wtf?" because it was weird and it was just legs and no upper torso in a retro '70s chair lol, but now I'm fine with it, and it is a crazy cover, just like the title. I still think the production in some songs and certain points could have been improved but over time, I'll be fine with it, as is. It may not be her best album (or at least, I don't consider it that for the time being, but who knows, I might change my mind). Lee Ann Womack is always better and more talented than most of her contemporaries and radio never really shows her the respect she deserves (that's really the case with most talented artists, though.) This album is really one of the highlights of the year and I think it brought us fans some more great music.

Oh man, I write a lot, and this took hours to write it seems... I guess I cannot be concise or shorten down my thoughts when I want to say a lot (you can literally call me crazy). You deserve a very big gold star for reading it through. Anyway, I'd rate this album about 4 out of 5 stars. Not her very best, but better than the works of most artists. Believe me, I wouldn't have spent so much time writing this, if it was terrible. Now, sit down, press "play" (or turn that turn table on, if you've got the vinyl version) and enjoy.


Link back: http://s8.zetaboards.com/LAW_Forums/topic/8023522/2/?x=0#post8000357
-CF
http://www.icfmusic.wordpress.com/
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From Chet Flippo on Cmt.com:

Call Me Crazy by Lee Ann Womack. Can anyone these days deliver a sad song with more heart-breaking credibility than Womack? I don't think so. Listen to "Last Call." Womack's a true standard-bearer of pure country music without making a big deal about it. She continues to find worthwhile songs and to then make them sound really good. This is not all purist country, but it's pure enough She sounds utterly convincing dueting with George Strait and Keith Urban on one album. That tells me Womack is working a knowing combination of traditional country with an updated sound. And you know what? No other woman singer in mainstream country music is doing that.

- http://www.cmt.com/news/nashville-skyline/1597793/nashville-skyline-lee-ann-womack-waylon-jennings-randy-houser.jhtml


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Another from Cmt.com:

Lee Ann Womack Is Still Crazy After All These Years
New Album, Call Me Crazy, Features "Last Call," Keith Urban
October 22, 2008; Written by Craig Shelburne

The title of Lee Ann Womack's new album, Call Me Crazy, begs the obvious question: Does the singer really consider herself crazy?

"I think it's more important what other people think!" she says with a burst of laughter that is more infectious than insane. "I mean, I don't really think I'm that wild and crazy, not compared to the artists that I listened to." In other words, she might close down the bar, but her riding lawnmower won't be parked outside.

Since 1997, Womack has publicly followed a path from neo-traditionalism ("The Fool") to mainstream crossover success ("I Hope You Dance") and back again (the CMA-winning album, There's More Where That Came From). On Call Me Crazy, she still finds room for twin fiddles -- "it's one of my favorite sounds in the whole world" -- although she has slightly toned down the twang. The first single, "Last Call," is essentially a sequel to another of her hits, "I May Hate Myself in the Morning." This time, however, she declines the drunken booty call.

Asked if anyone's ever suggested to her that women shouldn't record drinking songs, she shrugs and says, "Nobody's ever suggested that I shouldn't. I have definitely heard the argument that women don't. I don't know why. Women drink! So what difference does it make?"

She certainly doesn't shy away from recording challenging songs. "Either Way" bluntly describes a marriage that's over, although the household hasn't splintered off just yet. Meanwhile, "The Bees" might make sense if you've read the book that inspired it, "The Secret Life of Bees". But if you haven't, the lyrics are a real head-scratcher. (She says it's "for the listener to take however they want to. It's not real literal. Everything doesn't tie up real neatly.") The melody, however, is hypnotic, and guest vocals from Keith Urban don't hurt either.

"I am drawn to songs that make you feel something," says Womack, who is married to Nashville music publisher and producer Frank Liddell. "Occasionally, it might be funny or make you feel good, but a lot of the ones I'm drawn to, I touch on subjects that people just don't anymore. Even though we all have those same emotions -- the whole world does."

Today, Womack shares management with George Strait, one of her earliest musical heroes. On Call Me Crazy, Strait shows up on a duet that Womack co-wrote, "Everything but Quits." (They won a CMA Award in 2005 for another duet, "Good News, Bad News.") She confesses she's awestruck whenever she's around him.

"The things he's been able to pull off, it's amazing, and still maintain such a state of normalcy. He has no ego. He's a normal, regular guy," she says. "He's very easygoing. He's down to earth and normal. He's not self-absorbed. Most artists are a little narcissistic. It's just a quality that enables you to get up in front of thousands of people and sing. But he just seems to have less of those traits than most."

Of course, Strait's early albums on MCA Records were produced by Tony Brown, who also helmed pivotal albums by Vince Gill and Reba McEntire -- two of Womack's favorite singers. So when Womack moved from Jacksonville, Texas, to Nashville to attend Belmont University, she hatched a plan.

"I came to town, so naïve, thinking, 'I'm going to town, and I'm going to find this Tony Brown guy, and he's going to make me a star!' And I did just that. I came to town and found Tony Brown and started interning at the record label where he was. But we just now made a record together, and it was great to be able to do that. I still get a little starstruck around him, too."

Over the course of the interview, she also cites Ricky Skaggs and Tammy Wynette as significant influences on her own music.

"I think a singer's job is multi-faceted," she says. "A singer should be able to deliver a lyric in a way that draws people in and makes them want to hear what's going on, what's gonna happen, where is it going? I believe that's what's been great in the past about country music. We've had singers that you believe when you hear them. I hope that I'm one of those kinds of singers. That's important to me."

Womack will tour to help promote Call Me Crazy and says that she enjoys playing live now more than ever.

"I've gotten to a place where I don't do it by rote," she says. "I've gotten so comfortable with the musicians in my band. Literally, there are some nights that I will turn around and call out an old country song to them that we've never done. They'll all look at each other, but they do it. I know what they know, you know? I'll see one calling out the chords to another, because a couple of my guys have a little more pop/R&B background, but those are the most fun nights."

When she graciously accepts a compliment about her studio rendition of Don Williams' "Lord I Hope This Day Is Good," from a few albums back, she says, "I've done 'Til the Rivers All Run Dry' and 'If I Needed You,' too. They just haven't come out. ... They're on my computer. I've got all kinds of stuff I've cut on my computer, with just guitar and vocals, that I just want to have down. I don't know what I'll do with them."

But there is one thing you'll probably never hear from her -- and that's a generic "I'm country and here's why" song. Asked how often she hears that type of song in the demo pile, she replies, "Too often. To me, country is not something you can tell people you are. Country is not something you can put on or take off. It's not a certain way you dress. And if you have to tell people in a song, 'I'm country,' then I start wondering. You should be able to hear it."
-CF
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LEE ANN WOMACK
* Call Me Crazy
* {MCA Nashville}
* by roy kasten
* Oct 21, 2008

Lee Ann Womack's seventh album has a backstory. Her 2005 record There's More Where That Came From was the strongest artistic statement of her career, a shrewdly crafted album that did well with the critics and also sounded great on the radio. But in 2006 she moved from her longtime label MCA over to Mercury, planning an album called Finding My Way Back Home and even releasing the title track as a single. The song broke into the country top-40, but the album was never finished, and Womack returned to MCA this year.

Despite the playful '70s artwork – a pair of legs slip over the edge of a modular chair behind purple dots of type – and the sweet country pop glow of Tony Brown's production flair, Call Me Crazy is a heavy record. Song after song (some co-written by Womack, most coming from reliable Nashville sources) turn clever lyrical hooks toward dark, uneasy, sometimes doubt-filled terrain.

"Last Call", the opening track and first single, places bets on the predictable drunk-dialing of a doomed lover, while the slow-burning atmosphere (set by Bryan Sutton's eerie, pushing acoustic guitar) betrays Womack's declaration that she won't pick up the line. On "Either Way", she confesses that the classic tension between staying or leaving, endurance or departure, is meaningless; either way, she's out of love. And on the riveting "I Think I Know", written by the team of Tom Shapiro, Mark Nesler and Tony Martin, Womack sings, "I think I know what killed Keith Whitley/And it wasn't just the whiskey." It was the loneliness, the blues that "have no name," the same absence that took Hank Williams and, by the end of the song, Johnny Cash (after the death of June Carter Cash). On the spare ballad "Have You Seen That Girl", featuring a gut-string guitar that suggests the fragile introspection of Nick Drake, Womack sees her own soul slip away: "Once you're burned, you're not the same."

But it's not the poignant themes that set this album apart; Womack has tackled them before, if never so relentlessly. It is, naturally, Womack's voice, full of personality, clarity and caressing warmth, and so agile she could turn a melody inside-out and still wind up with a hook. The way she suspends and punctuates the soul bounce of "Solitary Thinkin'", lingers over the line "a sin away from a saint" on "New Again", or gracefully luxuriates in "Everything But Quits" (a waltzing, countrypolitan duet with George Strait) reveals a singer who understands the emotional power of a light touch. The record's one nod to gospel, "If These Walls Could Talk", reminds the listener that she can also summon the hard, twangy grit of a Loretta Lynn – but only if the song calls for it.

Mostly, the songs, and their sound, don't. While admirably free of the zeitgeist pandering that plagues and dates much of the current Nashville model, Call Me Crazy is a far more contemporary album than the beautifully backward-looking There's More Where That Came From. Tony Brown's way with his A team – including Paul Franklin, Aubrey Haynie, Randy Scruggs, Brent Mason and John Jarvis – may at times be too layered, but it never detracts from Womack's phrasing. When the arrangements overreach – as on "I Found It In You", a rocker that forces its message of romantic contentment on formulaic blasts of guitar – Womack doesn't waver from her preternatural control and expressiveness.

The album's most striking musical moment is "The Bees"; its muffled drums and down-home melody are carried by a bed of pump organ and fragments of pedal steel and fiddle that sound as if they were flown in as samples. It's like a country ode to Moby or Mitchell Froom, and unlike anything Womack or Brown has tried before. It's a move that suits an exquisitely confident artist on an album of considerable risks and just as many rewards.

- http://www.nodepression.com/articles.aspx?id=4057
-CF
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From Joe Sixpack:

Lee Ann Womack "Call Me Crazy" (MCA-Nashville, 2008)
(Produced by Tony Brown)


A veteran of a decade's worth of hitmaking in Nashville, Lee Ann Womack is one of those precious few Music City artists who can move back and forth between twangy neotrad and slick country pop and still get it right every time. These days, she tends to alternate between the two in album-sized chunks -- and this disc is one of her more pop-oriented records, a smooth, doleful set of breakup ballads that opens strong with the clever wordplay of "Last Call" and the "Either Way," an emotionally crushing portrait of a marriage just going through the motions. The rest of the album follows in a similar mode, well-sculpted, tastefully arranged pop-twang full of heartbreak and perseverance... The disc gets to be a bit of a downer, but if you're looking for a record to feel sorry to, and really need to delve into those sad, sad feelings, this is a real high-class option. There's a change in mood midway through, where she sings an homage to fallen country martyrs, "I Think I Know (What Killed Keith Whitley)" and then doles out several stunning, low-key honkytonk weepers. "If These Walls Could Talk" ("they'd pray") is destined to be a classic, and her duet with George Strait ("Everything But Quits") is an understated gem with two likeminded neotrad modernists who are absolutely on the same page together. This album doesn't have many songs that jump out at you as big radio hits, but there sure are a lot of songs that'll grow on you and echo in your heart. Good stuff.

Download picks:
- Last Call
- If These Walls Could Talk
- Everything But Quits (w/ George Strait)

- http://www.slipcue.com/music/country/new/2008/reviews_11_november08.html
-CF
http://www.icfmusic.wordpress.com/
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