• Josh Turner: Haywire
• Lady Antebellum: Need You Now
• Sugarland – Gold and Green

Josh Turner: Haywire

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The finest male voice on country radio is back with his first record in over two years. His last release, Everything is Fine went gold and saw him expanding his boundaries, experimenting with R&B and Celtic music. So Josh Turner had a lot to live up to on his fourth album.

Haywire starts off strong with infectious escapist tune “Why Don’t We Just Dance,” a single that recently cracked the Top 10. From there, the record is one love song after another. If you’re looking for a songs about drunkenness, brokenhearted wallowing, two-timing, or any other behaviors often featured in country music, best look someplace else, Debbie Downer. As he said in his interview with Blake Boldt last month, “Basically, the theme of this record is taking people’s minds off the economy and all that.” Mission accomplished? Maybe.

Though he had a hand on fewer songs than he did on Everything Is Fine, five of Haywire’s 11 songs were written or co-written by Turner. As always, he surrounds himself with some of the best in the business: Shawn Camp and Chris Stapleton show up once more as songwriters, while accomplished bluegrass musicians Bryan Sutton and Aubrey Haynie contribute some expert picking.

“As Fast As I Could,” written with Jeremy Spillman (“Another Try,” “Arlington”), is the one of the strongest songs of the album and seems destined for success on the charts. It sounds somewhat similar to “Would You Go With Me,” combining a rootsy fiddle and Dobro arrangement with an insanely catchy chorus. As with “Would You Go With Me,” Turner absolutely nails this song, sounding sweet and sincere as he sings “I ran full speed ahead without stopping to rest/Not knowing where I was headed to/Now that I’m here, it’s perfectly clear/I was making my way to you/Can’t believe how long it took/But I got here as fast as I could.” As a bonus, there are hints of Turner’s all-too-rare falsetto.

On Everything Is Fine, Josh Turner flirted with R&B on his duet with Anthony Hamilton, “Nowhere Fast.” On Haywire, the R&B feel is back with “Lovin’ You On My Mind,” only this time, Turner’s flying solo. Written by Kendell Marvel, Chris Stapleton, and Tim James, “Lovin’” is a slow burn of a song, thanks to Turner’s sultry delivery, which is backed by Nashville Sound-esque strings. It’s not hard to imagine this being a song Conway Twitty would have jumped at the chance to record 30 years ago. Also in this soulful vein is the decidedly unsexy but very moving gospeltune, “The Answer,” on which Turner brings in a choir.

Like his previous three albums, Haywire has some filler. But it’s better filler than the material on his earlier records: there are no outright stinkers like “Trailerhood.” The weakest song is the album’s title track. A song about a woman who leaves a man tongue-tied, shaking, and full of desire calls for a looser, wilder performance; here Turner’s restrained delivery suggests he’ll go haywire…as soon as this episode of Babe Winkelman’s Good Fishing ends. He’s made it clear that he can cut loose with songs like “Loretta Lynn’s Lincoln,” and Johnny Horton’s “One Woman Man,” but that feeling of playfulness is missing on “Haywire.”

The album’s lone cover is a remake of Don Williams’ 1987 Top 10 hit “I Wouldn’t Be a Man.” Turner’s version is nothing particularly special, especially when compared to Williams’ damn fine original; Turner seems to be phoning it in. It’s hard not to compare it to Turner’s other, better Don Williams cover, “Lord Have Mercy On a Country Boy” (from Your Man). Now, the lyrics to “I Wouldn’t Be a Man” are cringe-worthy even when a smooth guy like Don Williams is singing them, so althoughJosh Turner should be commended for singing “the secret way you touch me/Tells me there’s no holding back” without sounding like a creeper, this one can be skipped over without missing too much.

Though there are no exceptional songs on here comparable to “Long Black Train” or “The Longer the Waiting (The Sweeter the Kiss),” Haywire is a very solid album. It just doesn’t live up to the flashes of brilliance we’ve seen from Josh Turner on previous work.

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Lady Antebellum: Need You Now

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While neither surprising nor necessarily unwarranted, the buzz surrounding Lady Antebellum is reaching deafening levels. They have become country’s first great hope for 2010, and Need You Now tries valiantly to live up to that mantle. Fittingly ambitious but only fitfully inspired, it’s a huge record that sounds expensive, slick, and strategized. With its Bon Jovi guitars, U2 choruses, and Coldplay pianos, Need You Now is calibrated for broad appeal, and at times the human musicians seem a bit overwhelmed by the behemoth that Lady Antebellum has become.

Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott, and Dave Haywood prove themselves to be inventive studio artists. The gravelly guitar that opens “Perfect Day” coalesces into a tectonic bassline that lends the song its danceable rhythm, and “Stars Tonight” indulges arena-ready chants and shamelessly goofyguitar riffs that suggest the band are AC/DC fans.

In this regard, the title track is a stand-out. After the gimmicky voicemails that open the album, the song locks into an elegant acoustic shuffle complete with bursts of George Harrison guitars. Everything highlights that million-dollar chorus, and HillaryScott sings the hell out of it. A capable vocalist who is just now showing the true reach of her interpretive talent, she finds a way to channel both desire and despair. The way she sings the word “need” is a hook in and of itself.

Scott gives a commanding performance. Charles Kelley… not so much. When he sings lead on the second verse, the song loses some of its power. Kelley is the Kristian Bush of Lady Antebellum: a guiding music presence who is thoroughly overshadowed by his leading lady. It doesn’t help that he gets the worst song on Need You Now, a trite, plodding anthem titled “Hello World.” Sticky with symphonic sap, the songs builds carefully and patiently into a bombastic finish that probably works a lot better live, in front of a sea of lighters or cell phones. On record, though, it’s pretty ridiculous–especially sequenced mid-album–and Kelley sounds boorishly self-serious.

What makes “Hello World” so egregious—not to mention so out of character—is that Lady Antebellum clearly know how to deliver a country power ballad that is both smart and emotional. Closer “Ready to Love Again” and “If I Knew Then” display real poise and restraint, highlighting the vocal interplay between Kelley and Scott’s harmonies. In fact, as Need You Now progresses, Lady A jettison some of the rock experiments in favor of a more modest sound. Rather than diminishing their idiosyncrasies, it actually highlights the songwriting and singing.

“Perfect Day” in particular rushes by with a fresh momentum, as Scott describes an afternoon swimming at the lake and an evening listening to “all those feel-good songs.” What makes it more than just a calculated weekend ham (there are hundreds of similar songs) is the bittersweet realization that such joys are fleeting, that the next day will necessarily be less than perfect. “What I’d give if I could find a way to stay lost in this moment now,”Scott sings wistfully.

That’s a poignantly life-size moment on an album that could use many more. Too often Need You Now sounds studiously anonymous in its eager-to-please enormity, as if any hint of down-home personality might preempt its crossover appeal. They’re taking risks, but also playing it too safe.

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Sugarland – Gold and Green

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Much like holiday movies and specials, Christmas albums bring out the children and the Scrooges in all of us with their chintzy production and forced cheeriness. Typically, they’re filled with the musical equivalent of switches and ashes: perfunctory run-throughs of the same old songs you hear every year and uninspired new compositions you won’t remember by the new year. On the surface, however, the idea of Sugarland doing a Christmas album at least sounds promising: Kristian Bush has a flair for snappy pop-country arrangements, and Jennifer Nettles’ churchly personality projects pure spunk and personality.

Unfortunately, Gold and Green sounds slapdash and paltry, with few of these numbers exuding the wit, nuance, and power the duo have shown on three previous albums. “Winter Wonderland” is oppressively upbeat, and “Holly Jolly Christmas” mutates into an awkward sing-along. At least “Nuttin’ for Christmas” sounds relatively mischievous, with some of the playful spirit of “It Happens” and “Steve Earle.” On the other hand, “O Come O Come Emmanuel” sounds thin and perfunctory, completely lacking in gravity or impact. On “Silent Night” Nettles alternates between English and phonetic Italian, as if copping from Andrea Bocelli’s playbook.

The originals fare only somewhat better. Opener “City of Silver Dreams” evokes the magic of Christmas in New York, with shop windows “dressed up in ribbons and smiles” and St. Patrick’s “all lit up.” By the end, the song becomes a paean to renewed hope that sounds especially poignant this year. The title track tries to repeat the sentiment, but without the specific setting, it comes off a little flat. Nettles and Bush harmonize sweetly on the pop hook of “Maybe Baby (New Year’s),” and she shows off her considerable vocal power and control on the jazzy “Coming Home,” which ultimately reinforces my long-standing rule that only Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter should be allowed to scat-sing.

Like so many Christmas albums, Gold and Green is pure product, a stopgap between studio albums. Yet, the duo have already given us one such release this fall, the Wal-Mart exclusive Live on the Inside. That was a middling concert album that at least peppered familiar tunes with covers of Edie Brickell and R.E.M. As for this poorly wrapped present: No really,Sugarland, you shouldn’t have.

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