★★★★★
album review | roots-country
Corb Lund, 'Counterfeit Blues'
By Stuart Munro
| Globe Correspondent
July 01, 2014
The latest release from Canadian roots-country artist Corb Lund is a bit of an oddity -- it's kind of a live album, but not really, and sort of a greatest-hits comp, but not exactly...
- www.bostonglobe.com
2014-07-24
★★★★★
CORB LUND - Counterfeit Blues
Album:
Counterfeit Blues
Artist: Corb Lund
Label: New West
Release Date: July 01, 2014
www.NewWestRecords.com
BY JOHN B. MOORE
Corb Lund, the former Canadian punk rocker turned roots country singer, is back with his eighth record and has settled into a comfortable, stripped down grove with a little lap steel thrown in for good measure...
- blurtonline.com
2014-07-24
★★★★★
Small amounts of cash go a long way in Corb Lund tunes - a new song written on a lost $5 bill, $20 for a dance (maybe even a wife) in the imagination of one of his drunken characters, for example. The Edmonton country star's latest, Counterfeit Blues, isn't a greatest-hits album. Instead, Lund delivers a live-off-the-floor revisiting of favourites from two albums specifically: his 2002 breakthrough, Five Dollar Bill, and 2005's Hair In My Eyes Like A Highland Steer...
- nowtoronto.com
2014-07-08
★★★★★
Corb Lund might just be Alberta's best export since k.d. Lang. Lund's unpretentious country music has been topping charts and stealing hearts for over a decade now, and while there's no shortage of musical prowess in his band (Kurt Ceisla on bass, Brady Valgardson on drums, and Grant Siemens on guitar and lap steel), it's Lund's perfectly crafted story songs that make this music stand out...
- exclaim.ca
2014-06-14
★★★★★
Roots songwriters who specialize in novelty numbers don't have it so easy, which wasn't always the case - not by a long shot. Going on a century ago, Jimmie Rodgers established the model for a repertoire encompassing silly diversions, sentimental numbers and sobering autobiography, and as recently as the early 1990s - three full decades after "Ahab, The Arab" - Ray Stevens was still getting plenty of mileage out of albums that placed hokey absurdities alongside the occasional smooth ballad...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
There aren't many country artists other than Corb Lund who would open an album with a song as apocalyptic as "Gettin' Down on the Mountain." But challenging the stereotype of the cowboy singer has always made Lund unique. He continues to do just that on Cabin Fever, Lund's seventh album with his Hurtin' Albertans, who at this point have to be considered one of the tightest bands anywhere...
- exclaim.ca
2012-08-16
★★★★★
Corb Lund may not have come to Americana music in the most straightforward way (not because he's Canadian, but because he cut his teeth as a performer in the punk band the Smalls), but over the course of seven albums he's proven far more adept with the genre than most of his contemporaries. Cabin Fever, the singer-songwriter's latest, is a politically charged set that finds Lund at his quick-witted best, drawing favorable comparisons to the likes of Fred Eaglesmith and Todd Snider...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2012-08-13
★★★★★
You might not know it from Taylor Swift's recent sweep at the CMA ceremony, but country music was once made by people that knew what it meant to get dirt under their fingernails. Not that there's anything wrong with beauty queens who can write and sing, but there just aren't any rural roots to be found underneath all those platinum blonde hairdos. Yes, friends, real cowboys wrote and sang songs about real country life...
- roughstock.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
Seems like Corb Lund may be quite serious about continuing Ian Tyson's legacy as Canada's premier cowboy tunesmith. And despite a recent tribute album and rumours to the contrary, Ian Tyson is still very much with us, and recording as well. After several fetching stabs at musical stardom, Lund settles in with his most accomplished album yet...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02