All Music Guide
Little Big Town scored big with 2005's The Road to Here, their second album even if it took until late 2006 for that to finally happen. The quartet that includes Karen Fairchild, Kimberly RoadsSchlapman, Jimi Westbrook, and Philip Sweet had been out there like road dogs for years and saw their initial selftitled recording gain some critical notice but not much in terms of sales. The band's seamless melding of contemporary rootsy country and the vocal harmonies of Fleetwood Mac set it apart from the newcrop masses. Through endless touring, regular rotation on CMT and GAC, and the grudging eventual recognition given by the accountants who serve as programmers at country radio, Little Big Town broke through to contemporary country fans (and if there is a more devoted, less finicky brand of music fan out there, good luck finding them) and scored a win as Best New Group or Duo at the 2007 CMAs. A Place to Land, despite being a third album, is the place to show that The Road to Here was no ...fluke. It wasn't. Musically, lyrically, and productionwise, A Place to Land is superior to its predecessor. Perhaps the real secret to the success of this singing and songwriting quartet is its secret weapon in behindtheboards fifth member Wayne Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick is the band's producer and songwriting partner. While LBT coproduced the set with him, they cowrote ten of the 12 tunes on the set with him as well. He's chief guitar picker, and plays just about anything with strings as well as the clavinet and B3. If the sound on The Road to Here was reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's glory years in the 1970s particularly due to the songwriting of Lindsay Buckingham A Place to Land drinks deeply from the well of the entire Southern California scene in the mid to late '70s. It's not like they simply regurgitate or imitate it, either. Little Big Town's sound is rooted deeply in traditional, organic country music. They haven't tried to become Southern rock lite imitators, as have so many of their peers. Kirkpatrick gets this and brings to the table a seamless, very natural production style instead of the sterile compression that saturates so much of what is contemporary country and makes it sound like sterile stadium rock. Here, Little Big Town's songs meld seamlessly with the vocal harmonies of not only Fleetwood Mac, but also the Crosby, Stills Nash of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and the earliest records of the Eagles. While the album's opener, "Fine Line," literally rings with Buckingham's chord progressions, choruses, and arranged vocal harmonies and nuances from "Go Your Own Way," it's open rock roll territory with one exception: the verse structure has enough hard country in it with that blend of four voices and killer lyrics that it's undoubtedly LBT. They can trademark their own brand of the "Southern" in the Cali folk, pop. and rock brew from decades past. They distinguish themselves a bit more on the album's first single, "I'm With The Band," which has enough road weariness in it to match the CSN travelogue, but the beautiful pace with a bluegrass line drop here, a Gretsch guitar lick there, and the loping chorus phrasing makes it one of the great road songs of the decade thus far. When the B3, electric guitars, and big cracking drums come flowing in, the Dobro, banjos, and mandolin are woven right into the fabric. It feels natural and airy, and it packs a wallop. The Eagles get soundchecked in "That's Where I'll Be"'s chord structure (which was based on their own take on country music anyway), but the harmonies here could only be better if Bernie Leadon and Timothy B. Schmidt joined them for sixpart instead of fourpart harmony. The acoustic guitars rise and fall, keeping a steady rhythmic chatter that serves as a painterly backdrop for those gorgeous voices. There is a loneliness and conviction in this song that doesn't feel presold or prepackaged, with a wideopen sound that evokes a predawn landscape and the intimacy of love being declared for the first time. This band has another side as well, and it's brought out in spades with the spooky "Evangeline," a harrowing song about emotional abuse: "You don't have to be kicked to be bruised/And you don't have to be hit to be abused...." It's one woman talking to another, exhorting her to see what's happening to her with her denial that she can be saved by her own love when it's being hammered into submission by a sick male who thrives on his meanness. With its high lonesome guitars, a spidery Dobro, and muffled floor tom and snare, it carries so much weight and is so utterly out of the normal realm of country's usual serious topics (which need to reflect a "hearth, home, country, and church" ethos) that it is as powerful in its way as Gretchen Wilson's "Independence Day." Read more Less
