Eclectic & unique appeal for a wide audience
By Yahoo! Shopping User Aug 27, 2006
Pros: original material, splendid vocalizing and excellent guitar playing
Cons: If the cornball last track annoys you, just skip it
Playing Time 65:41 -- With much of Brads original material, splendid vocalizing and excellent guitar playing, Time Well Wasted is a great addition to this West Virginians musical canon. It also includes his latest hit, Alcohol, recorde...d with live audience. The medicine and poison to help you up or make you fall that wry-witted Paisley sings about might also just be an appropriate analogy for the many moods and emotions that he can convey with his songs. Shes Everything and Love is Never-Ending are strong love songs on the album. The albums opener, The World, is a fresh outlook about how ones undying commitment and devotion can make another feel important, special and needed. Easy Money is a somewhat autobiographical account of the various band members who used to work as roofer, truck driver, salesmen, garbage man and hot dog stand operator. Besides featuring many superior instrumentalists in the idiom, the cornerstone of Paisleys music is his lyrics. He finds ways to engage and draw us in with multiple catchy hooks and messages that often both humorous and powerful. You Need a Man Around Here shows that hes pretty perceptive when he sings about a womans place needing a bass on the wall, beer, Maxim and Field & Stream magazines, and someone to kill the spiders. Brad offers some rousing collaborations. With Alan Jackson, Out in the Parking Lot is a Guy Clark/Darrell Scott song about partying on the fender of someone elses truck at the local honky tonk. In the gospel vein, The Uncloudy Day only spans 53 seconds, recreates a scratchy LP sound, and serves as the prologue to a song with Dolly Parton. She contributes her defining harmony vocals to the reflective When I Get Where I'm Going, about whats ahead on that evergreen shore, a home where no storm clouds rise. Time Warp is a barn-burning instrumental that allows many of the stellar accompanists to shine. The CD features players Jim Moose Brown, Ben Sesar, Kevin Swine Grantt, Justin Williamson, Randel Currie, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Bryan Sutton and others. A host of vocalists also appear. On the bonus closing track, Cornography, we hear fun narrative with Little Jimmy Dickens, George Jones, Bill Anderson and Dolly Parton. At first, I questioned the rationale for ending the album with this corn, but then I realized it as his offbeat way to pay respect to these Grand Ole Opry greats. If the sketch annoys you, just skip the last track. Time Well Wasted, Paisleys fourth album, has an eclectic and unique way of appealing to a very wide audience. Part singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, and humorist, Brad Paisley has produced an album that has mainstream sensibilities and strong, personalized signature sound and personality. For those who dont believe in Brad, they can kiss his backstage pass. (Joe Ross) Read more Less
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