★★★★★
Seasoned campaigner yanks up his roots... Save for a 2005 solo album and an unlikely recent collaboration with Petter Øien at the Norwegian heats of Eurovision, Bobby Bare has been pretty low key since the early '80s. So where better to mount a comeback than Plowboy Records, the new label set up by Eddy Arnold's grandson to restore the profile of once-thriving country players? There is something satisfyingly cyclical about Darker Than Light...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2014-05-20
★★★★★
Ohio veteran Bare, 80 next year, has tried his hand at all manner of things during his lengthy career. His biggest successes may have come via embracing the honky-tonky side of country in the 60s, but he's also dabbled in bluegrass, western swing and traditional folk. He even had one of his numbers shortlisted for Norway's Eurovision Song Contest entry.
- recordcollectormag.com
2014-03-27
★★★★★
Bobby Bare - "The Real Thing (More Than a Memory)" "Lost album" remains a discographical assignation fraught with ambiguities. What exactly qualifies for the marketing-savvy signifier? Is posthumous pressing, as in the case of Hendrix's First Rays of the New Rising Sun, a prerequisite? Or is it merely sufficient for the platter not to have been properly appreciated in its time...
- dustedmagazine.com
2013-05-25
★★★★★
Bare had been a relatively big noise in Nashville for a decade-and-a-half when he signed a management deal with hard-nosed rock promoter Bill Graham in the late 70s, who sought to introduce his charge to a wider audience as "the Springsteen of country music". The rebirth included tours of college circuits to woo a younger demographic but, in terms of the music, there was no radical overhaul...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Socially-conscious concept albums were still a relatively nascent commodity in country music when Bobby Bare waxed Hard Time Hungrys in 1975. He had been one of the pioneers of the format back in 1967 with A Bird Named Yesterday, a loose collection of songs lamenting the paving over of comforting old ways with ennui-inducing new. Hungrys covered comparable topical territory, but turned a specific lens to the trials and tribulations of the unemployed, incarcerated and working poor...
- dustedmagazine.com
2012-04-23
★★★★★
No text for this review; see http://robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Bare's cowboys wonder how come they're in Calgary, eat stew just like in the movies, scoff at poets, fuck cows, and lie about their age. His daddys lie about cowboys...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Cream, Schream: The Moon Was Blue is the comeback event of 2005. Coaxed out ofretirement by his son Bobby Jr., the erstwhile country hitmaker isreleasing his first record in 22 years, and it's the work of a craftymaster. Retooling old chestnuts like "Everybody's Talkin"' and "ShineOn, Harvest Moon," Bare pours out just enough regret and world-wearinesswithout lapsing into melodrama.
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
Bobby Bare is, in some ways, a deceptive artist. His smooth, beguiling baritone and accomplished Countrypolitan productions sometimes tend to overshadow the fact that he is an artist of immense substance. Two of his most impressive country-concept albums are presented here, restored and remastered from the original RCA Victor master tapes, with a number of rare extra tracks. A Bird Named Yesterday was originally issued in 1967 and is, quite simply, stunning...
- www.forcedexposure.com
2009-06-08
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