Artist: Jason Aldean
Album: Night Train
Label: Broken Bow Records
Rating: 3.5/5
REVIEW by: Henry Lees
Jason Aldean is batting a thousand. On October 26th, he sold out Fenway Park in a blindingly-fast seven minutes and immediately added a second show at Boston’s legendary ball park to his 2013 tour schedule. Night Train, Aldean’s fifth studio album, bowed on October 16th and initial reaction cements it as a chart and sales force to be reckoned with. First week sales topped out at well over 400,000 copies, good enough to give Aldean the second best sales debut of the year in the US behind Mumford & Sons’ Babel, which moved over 600,000 copies in its first week. Of course, this was all true until Taylor Swift unleashed Red last week and blew right past the boys with 1.2 million albums sold in just seven days setting a SoundScan all time record for country albums. Still, Swift can’t swipe away the fact that Night Train brought Aldean his first #1 debut on the all-genre, Billboard Top 200 Albums chart.
So, does Night Train hit a home run for the Georgia native and big baseball fan? Not completely, but it shows that Aldean knows how to cover all the right bases to keep big success rolling along.
The Aldean sound, after five albums of honing it with producer Michael Knox, is muscle bound, meaty and full of enough guitar distortion to rival a Def Leppard Greatest Hits package. Even Night Train‘s ballads are powered up and full of posture. Aldean’s trademark mash up of down home ‘tude with arena rock aggression has become more taut and focused with each release. Aldean now has the career clout to pick cream of the crop songs from some of Music City’s brightest tunesmiths like Neil Thrasher, Wendell Mobley, Rhett Akins, Hillary Lindsey, David Lee Murphy, Tony Shapiro and Rodney Clawson. He draws on that clout to full effect but goes to the same well a few times too many to give this fifteen-track Night Train enough sonic variety from engine to caboose.
Night Train pulls out of the station full steam ahead with “This Nothin’ Town”, a heartland rocker with an unapologetic, rah-rah-for-the-rural-life sentiment. This album starter has enough going for it to be a solid follow up release to the insanely infectious #1 smash lead single, “Take a Little Ride”. After the unremarkable “When She Says Baby”, “Feel That Again” roars to life with an amp melting riff and a yearning for good times gone by. “Guitar comin’ through the speakers. That song you never want to end. Gimme some of that you and me, some of that way back when. A little bit of wild and free. I wanna feel that again.” Aldean rips into these chorus lyrics with a power and undeniable conviction equal to the whip-crack lead guitar behind him. Where “Feel That Again” reminisces about rockin’ out with some dramatic flair, “Wheels Rollin’” limps along under lightweight, generic statements. “Here I go, down this road. Another town, another State, I wouldn’t have it any other way. All I want is to sing my songs. Hearin’ that crowd keeps me goin’, guitars rockin’, wheels rollin’.” There has to be a fresher way to add another entry to the “I love making music” compendium.
Cool idea kudos go out for bringing together Aldean and his buddies Luke Bryan and Eric Church for “The Only Way I Know”. These three, current chart kings sound comfortable together as they trade off on the song’s spoken word verses extolling hard working, salt of the earth virtues. It’s unfortunate that the song itself isn’t more of a surprising departure the way “Dirt Road Anthem” is on My Kinda Party.
One place where Night Train threatened to jump the tracks for me is the banjo-inflected, funked-up name checker “1994”, co-written by rising star Thomas Rhett with Luke Laird and Barry Dean. The song reaches back to tribute ’90s hit-maker Joe Diffie with Aldean inserting Diffie song titles as he raps promises to be your “Pick Up Man” and to put a little “‘Third Rock’ in your hip-hop”. Aldean launches into a “Joe, Joe, Joe Diff-iiee” chant that’s cringe-worthy at first but, there’s an honest reverence and sense of fun that sums up this tune overall. This is Night Train’s one risky experiment that will very likely pay off in a big way. It already has for Diffie, who recently told Billboard, “Every time I hear the song, it puts a huge grin on my face.”
Elsewhere on the album, the rowdy abandon of “Take a Little Ride” ushers in a strong mid-section that continues with the plaintive and nuanced “I Don’t Do Lonely Well”. Next, the mid-tempo title track takes a cool, clear night, a blanket, a fifth of Southern Comfort and the sound of a passing train and turns it all into a romantic adventure of epic proportions thanks to vivid imagery and Aldean’s impassioned vocal. Other high points include the sorrowful, stripper character study, “Black Tears”, penned by Mercury Nashville up-and-comer Canaan Smith and Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard, and the reflective album closer in which a “Water Tower” is personified as a long lost friend providing a warm welcome home.
Night Train showcases an artist who’s revelling in the strength of his signature sound but, for his next time at bat, here’s hoping that Aldean will take a few more unconventional swings.
