rida shows!January 21, 2008
Music Review Rascal Flatts
Music Review Rascal Flatts
Power Ballads for Suburbanites
By JON PARELES
Wholesomeness reigned when Rascal Flatts headlined Madison Square Garden on Friday night. The top band in 21st-century country music, with four multimillion-selling albums and a fifth that has sold a million copies since September, Rascal Flatts is fearlessly contented and relentlessly inoffensive.
Exulting that the band had sold out the famous arena, its bassist, Jay DeMarcus, called out, “Madison by God Square by God Garden!” — no cuss words for Rascal Flatts. During “He Ain’t the Leavin’ Kind,” a song about the omnipresence of God, a group of United States marines marched onstage to stand at attention, which might have offended only those worried about separation of church and state.
The three core members of Rascal Flatts — Mr. DeMarcus and the singer Gary LeVox, both from Ohio, and the guitarist Joe Don Rooney, from Oklahoma — write and sing about happy marriages, undying love and dreams coming true. Sometimes the reassurance is interrupted by a heartbreak, which gives Mr. LeVox a chance to make his high, quavery voice extra tearful.
Although the eight-man band is based in Nashville and includes some country instruments, its pedal steel guitar or mandolin are usually more visible than audible. Rascal Flatts is, by and large, a power-ballad band. Like many current country acts, it sings for suburbanites, and its prime sources are 1970s and ’80s soft rock and arena pop: Steve Miller, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Eagles and, especially in its vocal harmonies, Crosby, Stills & Nash.
It’s a proficient band. Mr. Rooney has a whole arena-rock guitar vocabulary at his fingertips, from crunchy blues-rock riffs to commanding leads. As if insisting that the band isn’t led by its main frontman, Mr. LeVox, the other two founders had their own indulgent solo segments. Mr. DeMarcus sang James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and Mr. Rooney offered the concert’s most aggressive song: the Guess Who’s “American Woman.”
The band had country moments like the witty “Backwards,” about hearing a country song in reverse: “You get your truck back, you get your hair back, you get your first and second wife back.” But most of the time Rascal Flatts specialized in simpering and big buildups, amid an arena-rock spectacle of flashing video and fireworks. Settled heartland Americans certainly deserve songs that address their lives. The question is whether those songs have to be so cloying.
Kellie Pickler, who opened the concert, was dressed in a low-cut red top and knee-high leather boots with spike heels. But she could sound like an old-fashioned country singer, with a North Carolina drawl and some twangy tension in her voice. She did a Dolly Parton impression in “9 to 5,” while alluding to her own career-building appearance on “American Idol” (she didn’t win) by calling Ms. Parton “my definition of an American idol.”
Ms. Pickler’s 2006 album is entitled with her demographic credentials, “Small Town Girl” (BNA). In its songs Ms. Pickler offered minor skirmishes of the sexes — making a guy miss her by going out on the town in “Red High Heels,” dressing casually in “One of the Guys” — and the autobiography of being abandoned by her mother in “I Wonder.” Ms. Pickler has her own power ballads alongside her honky-tonk, and she’s not challenging any Nashville conventions, but at least she’s keeping some down-home charm.
By JON PARELES
Wholesomeness reigned when Rascal Flatts headlined Madison Square Garden on Friday night. The top band in 21st-century country music, with four multimillion-selling albums and a fifth that has sold a million copies since September, Rascal Flatts is fearlessly contented and relentlessly inoffensive.
Exulting that the band had sold out the famous arena, its bassist, Jay DeMarcus, called out, “Madison by God Square by God Garden!” — no cuss words for Rascal Flatts. During “He Ain’t the Leavin’ Kind,” a song about the omnipresence of God, a group of United States marines marched onstage to stand at attention, which might have offended only those worried about separation of church and state.
The three core members of Rascal Flatts — Mr. DeMarcus and the singer Gary LeVox, both from Ohio, and the guitarist Joe Don Rooney, from Oklahoma — write and sing about happy marriages, undying love and dreams coming true. Sometimes the reassurance is interrupted by a heartbreak, which gives Mr. LeVox a chance to make his high, quavery voice extra tearful.
Although the eight-man band is based in Nashville and includes some country instruments, its pedal steel guitar or mandolin are usually more visible than audible. Rascal Flatts is, by and large, a power-ballad band. Like many current country acts, it sings for suburbanites, and its prime sources are 1970s and ’80s soft rock and arena pop: Steve Miller, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Eagles and, especially in its vocal harmonies, Crosby, Stills & Nash.
It’s a proficient band. Mr. Rooney has a whole arena-rock guitar vocabulary at his fingertips, from crunchy blues-rock riffs to commanding leads. As if insisting that the band isn’t led by its main frontman, Mr. LeVox, the other two founders had their own indulgent solo segments. Mr. DeMarcus sang James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and Mr. Rooney offered the concert’s most aggressive song: the Guess Who’s “American Woman.”
The band had country moments like the witty “Backwards,” about hearing a country song in reverse: “You get your truck back, you get your hair back, you get your first and second wife back.” But most of the time Rascal Flatts specialized in simpering and big buildups, amid an arena-rock spectacle of flashing video and fireworks. Settled heartland Americans certainly deserve songs that address their lives. The question is whether those songs have to be so cloying.
Kellie Pickler, who opened the concert, was dressed in a low-cut red top and knee-high leather boots with spike heels. But she could sound like an old-fashioned country singer, with a North Carolina drawl and some twangy tension in her voice. She did a Dolly Parton impression in “9 to 5,” while alluding to her own career-building appearance on “American Idol” (she didn’t win) by calling Ms. Parton “my definition of an American idol.”
Ms. Pickler’s 2006 album is entitled with her demographic credentials, “Small Town Girl” (BNA). In its songs Ms. Pickler offered minor skirmishes of the sexes — making a guy miss her by going out on the town in “Red High Heels,” dressing casually in “One of the Guys” — and the autobiography of being abandoned by her mother in “I Wonder.” Ms. Pickler has her own power ballads alongside her honky-tonk, and she’s not challenging any Nashville conventions, but at least she’s keeping some down-home charm.
1 comment:
Awesome information! Will definitely be visiting this site on a regular basis to find out more of the inside scoop on "the concert scene"! Thanks!
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