Music Shop: Buy Home Online

Average Rating:

This album is exactly what music should be: raw, full of emotion, energy, upbeat when it needs to be and slowing it down in all the right places. 'White Trash Wedding' and 'Lil' Jack Slade' are fantastic songs that just make you want to clap your hands and stomp your feet. The melodic 'Godspeed (Sweet Dreams) and the beautiful rendition of Stevie Nicks' 'Landslide' just make you want to close your eyes and listen. However, the jewel of this album is without a doubt 'Travelin' Soldier', an amazing ballad about love and war. It's enough to send chills down my back every time I hear it.

Bottom line: This is one of the most amazingly crafted and melodic albums I've heard in a long time. Ranks high with Norah Jones as one of the best albums of the year...

"Home" is not without flaws; the song selection is hit or miss. A high point is "Landslide". I didn't think anyone could out-do Stevie Nicks' singular voice for melancholy pathos, but Natalie Maines comes close. It's a lovely performance.

"Landslide" is followed by the insipid tearjerking in "Travelin' Soldier". Sorry to ruin the "plot" for you, but the lonely serviceman who has the one-night stand with the jail-bait narrator who gets pregnant and has the couple's love-child -- he dies in the war. Shocker, huh? The rest of the performances, aside from a couple of barn-dance howlers like the tossed-off "White Trash Wedding", are generally down-tempo songs with forgettable lyrics. A minor complaint: one of the more appealing things about music in the "country" format is that the artists are usually kind to our attention spans; it's rare for a song to exceed the four-minute barrier; that happens a lot here; I found myself glancing at the elapsed-time display on my CD player more than once while playing this CD. Almost every cut seems to be about 30 seconds too long. (The extended coda in "Top of the World" is particularly unnecessary. The sweet little lullaby seemingly ends at just the right moment, and then it picks up again for no particular reason.)

In summary, this CD's rating deserves an extra star just for giving the finger to stagnant country radio convention. If they had weeded out some of the schmaltz and tightened up the editing, this would be near perfect.s even after scores of listenings.

Unlike the live version, this contains an instrumental coda, remindful of a Scottish funeral dirge, with the drummer's marching snare recalling the losses suffered during that unpopular war. While the instrumentation and harmonies throughout the CD show musical roots tracing to Appalachia and even back to the Emerald Isle, the album is no mere wallow in nostalgia, but almost prescient about wars and rumors of war to come. In Tim O'Brien and Gary Nicholson's "More Love," we are reminded that humanity learns little from history: "Just look around us/People fightin' their wars/They think they'll be happy/When they settle their scores."

On first listening you are almost overwhelmed by the quality of the songs selected for "Home." There is no filler, and the final two tunes, Radney Foster's "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)" and Patty Griffin's "Top of the World" are worth the purchase price alone. If "Travelin' Soldier" or "More Love" didn't get to you, parents who have stood in wonder and joy at the sight of their sleeping child cannot help but be moved by "Godspeed," with lines like "The rocket racer's all tuckered out/Superman's in pajamas on the couch."

You can't make judgments about standing the test of time based on a first hearing, but I'd be willing to state after that one listen that this is a nearly perfect album that will continue to reveal new qualities on repeated listenings. At a time when commercial music is challenged only by the stock market in its downward dive, the integrity and gutsiness of "Home" is a beacon to those of us who still hold out hope.

The trio, in a well-publicized fight with their record label, went to their own studio to record the CD, produced by the Dixie Chicks themselves and lead singer Natalie's father, Lloyd Maines, a legendary Nashville musician himself.

Contrast the authenticity and uniqueness of this disc with the recent work of the Irish vocal band, The Corrs. Like the Chicks, the Corrs feature three women, play their own instruments, and possess angelic voices. Unlike the Chicks, their recent work has been turned over to slick commercial crossover experts, leading to bland mush that sells well, but leaves no lasting impact whatsoever.

The Chicks, remaining true to themselves and their roots have proven the folly of trying to deliver what so-called experts think the world wants to hear.

All of which leads to the inevitable conclusion, suggested by fans of the American band themselves: "Chicks rule!"