★★★★★
His voice was a broken hinge soaked in corn liqour-and that braying tenor could take the sludge off an emotion without thinking. A good ole boy's good ole boy, John Anderson's willingness to hurl his heart over the side allowed him to push the traditional envelope in ways-for the day-that were beyond progressive...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
John Anderson was a truecuriosity when he arrived on the scene in the early '80s. Equippedwith the face of a gnome, the voice of a Florida swamp creature, andthe honky-tonk spirit of Lefty Frizzell, Anderson made a passel offine records and won a CMA award. But by the end of the decade, henearly disappeared after releasing a string of albums with anonymousmaterial...
- ew.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
The songs fade on side two, but not since Hank Williams Jr. fell off his mountain and Gary Stewart fell off his barstool has anybody put so much vocal muscle into unadorned hard stuff. Convincer: Buddy Spicher's fiddle break on the definitive "She Just Started Liking Cheatin' Songs."
- www.robertchristgau.com
2010-06-11
★★★★★
The hands are God's, the gullet is his own, and the times are getting him down ("What Used to Turn Me On," "Shuttin' Detroit Down").
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-09-19
★★★★★
In the right's first flush of power, as Nashville nostalgia merges revoltingly with El Lay schlock, Anderson's modest regard for the verities becomes not just a virtue but a treasure. Unlike, let us say, Eddie Rabbitt, he knows the difference between traditionalism and conformism, sentiment and bathos, makin' love and makin' out, fiddles and strings; he has the guts to attack "the power of the almighty dollar."
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Aided by his godson John Rich, he achieves "funky country" once again -- but not when he puts it that way ("Brown Liquor," "A Woman Knows").
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Anderson is Ricky Skaggs without Jesus--his voice lowdown rather than angelic, his roots in the honky tonks rather than the mountains, his album wild and blue, a sexier way to say (and sing) highways and heartaches. But his gift for ballads is still a little soft, which means he comes up a touch short on the ones you know and can't quite turn filler into the staff of life.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
The noncommital title says a lot--about professionalism, about product. Not so much compromised as off his game, he kicks in with two winners and finishes off with a triumphant trope: "There's a light at the end of the tunnel/And for once it ain't a fast moving train." In between he goes all mushy about God, love, little children, born-to-losers, and the working man.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
No text for this review; see http://robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
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