★★★★★
No Better Than This Rounder Rating: If you were one of those people who weren't real fond of John (then Cougar) Mellencamp in the early '80s, you weren't alone. But hopefully you came to realize that he wasn't going away no matter how sick you were of "Jack and Diane," and that he was the real deal: A midwestern farm town boy who was just as passionate about rock 'n' roll and acoustic music as he was about the rural way of life, and didn't care who agreed with him...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
One of the most clearly defined misfit students in the runaway hit TV series Glee is the (belatedly) openly gay Kurt, dressed head-totoe in designer threads, his iPod packed with Lady Gaga and the Broadway cast recording of Wicked on repeat. Kurt's dad loves and supports him but, as a check-shirted sportswatching grease monkey living in Ohio, is portrayed as the polar opposite of his son. Kurt's dad likes John Mellencamp...
- www.recordcollectormag.com
2010-12-21
★★★★★
Patriotism and love for America have always informed John Mellencamp's music and progressive politics. His new set, "Freedom's Road," is his most unabashedly American album yet. Of course, there's nothing as powerful as "Scarecrow" or "Pink Houses" here, but "Freedom's Road" does contain some potent explorations into poverty, racism and jingoism. His duet with legendary protest singer Joan Baez on the impressive "Jim Crow" is as affecting as Mellencamp's "Jackie Brown." It's a clear standout...
- www.soundspike.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
John Mellencamp does what he knows best - create music from the American Heartland. What Bruce Springsteen did for working-class urban neighbourhoods, Mellencamp does for rural small towns. As a special treat for his 25th album, Mellencamp goes old-school full tilt. Teaming up with producer T-Bone Burnett, the two recorded everything in mono using a vintage microphone and an old Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder to give it authenticity...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
Over the last 10 years, John Mellencamp has moved steadily away from the studio-slick punch of his heyday in the late '80s and early '90s, and the rootsier approach he has taken of late has served him well. His songs have always conveyed a rural-minded brand of populism, and his latest album, No Better Than This, continues his evolution into a modern-day folk hero. The record also happens to be one of the most focused, tightly written sets of Mellencamp's career...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2010-08-25
★★★★★
John Mellencamp calls No Better Than This his "most rebellious record ever" and who are we to argue? No disrespect to Mellencamp, but it's not like his long career has been filled with crazy detours into free form jazz and electronica. He's never gone Christian, never done anything like his pal Lou Reed and set an entire album to Edgar Allen Poe's writing, never fully challenged his audience...
- www.popmatters.com
2010-08-24
★★★★★
Since introducing Jack & Diane, two American kids having as much fun as possible before getting swallowed up into adulthood, John Mellencamp has been a Top 40 contradiction: a patriotic rebel, a proud worshipper of the American Dream and a chronicler of disillusionment. At his best he has juggled these extremes sympathetically; but on his 21st album, despite a rich, brooding folk rock that returns him to the sound of his late-'80s creative high point, there are two vastly different Mellencamps...
- www.blender.com
2010-08-22
★★★★★
John Mellencamp's first comprehensive career compilation shows how the Indiana singer built a career out of reflecting other populist rockers. He worked through a Springsteen-lite phase ("I Need a Lover") and rewrote a few melodies ("Paper In Fire" begat "Martha Say"), but found his niche as a small-town storyteller (the immortally cheesy "Jack & Diane") and as the unofficial voice of desperate farmers ("Rain On the Scarecrow")...
- www.blender.com
2010-08-22
★★★★★
John Mellencamp is such an old-timey, small-town kind of guy that he recorded his new album in mono. That's entirely fitting, since quite a few of this baker's dozen of new tunes (produced by T Bone Burnett) sound like lost classics plucked from scratchy old 78 rpm discs. Compelling and heartfelt, No Better Than This feels tantalizingly timeless. Recommended to anyone who's spent the ? past few years obsessively revisiting Bob Dylan's Love and Theft.
- ew.com
2010-08-16
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