The plot gets old, do you know what I mean?....

I had just seen Little Big Town on CMT this week with Lindsey Buckingham on the show Crossroads, where country artists pair up with rock artists to perform each others' songs. This show is great, and this pairing was no exception. The group is a cleaned up version of Fleetwood Mac for sure, and The Road To Here brings out the harmonies of Mac's "The Chain" to a whole albums' worth. Little Big Town's first self-titled album came out in 2002, with minor success (one top-40 country hit in "Don't Waste My Time"). Waiting three years to release The Road From Here is really worth the wait. With the help of better songwriting (courtesy of help from "Wrapped Up In You" and "Change The World"'s writer Wayne Kirkpatrick) and class-A vocal performances, this album snuck up to be one of the best country albums of this year.

Kicking off with the kiss-off wall of harmony on "Good As Gone", the groups' secret weapon of four equality good lead singers trade off quite nicely. "Boondocks", while bordering on hokey with its almost-too-defensive tack on being hick-like, wins me over with its performance and simplicity. After that comes the rewrite of Mac's "The Chain" in "Bones" which actually is the best song on the album, with its backwoods acoustic guitar accompaning the tightest harmonies I've heard since the Eagles. The standard-love-song single "Bring It On Home", the biggest hit from the album, would find just as good a place on lite-pop radio as on country, and actually not in a bad way. The pace picks up a little with "Wounded", a good counterpart to "Good As Gone" in the broken-hearts category. More pop-country goodness comes with songs like "A Little More You", the Eagles re-dux "Mean Streak", and the quieter "Live With Lonesome". "Lost" would've been a great closer, with the powerful performance and the epic theme of mourning, made more poignant with the loss of band member Kimberly Roads' husband before the recording of the album. It would have grandly closed the album, but there are three more not-so-bad but not-so-classic songs at the end, including the hillbilly novelty "Welcome To The Family", the unexceptional "Fine With Me" and the serene "Stay".

Not once on this album does the harmony and vocal interplay between the two men and two women of Little Big Town stop. That by itself makes it an interesting album. Paired with stronger songs helped along by Kirkpatrick, The Road To Here is a real winner for those looking for a little "countrier" version of pop-country.

Grade: A-
Best Cuts: "Good As Gone", "Boondocks", "Bones", "Bring It On Home", "Wounded", "A Little More You", "Live With Lonesome", "Mean Streak", "Lost"

The Road To Here hit #12 on the country and #51 on the pop albums chart.
"Boondocks" hit #9 country and #46 pop singles chart.
"Bring It On Home" made #4 country and #58 pop.
"Good As Gone" so far made #27 country.

To buy The Road From Here you can go to sites like here and here.

To listen to the song "Bones" you can download by clicking here (rightclick to bring up in another window).

And here's the video for the single "Good As Gone".