Album Review: Alan Jackson - Thirty Miles West

The Quick view of Thirty Miles West: Meat and potatoes no-frills country music at its finest. Read on to see us explore the heart and soul of Alan Jackson's latest album and first for ACR/EMI Records Nashville.

"Gonna Come Back As A Country Song" finds Jackson taking a Chris Stapleton/Terry McBride song and I'll be damned if this little ditty doesn't indeed have loads of fiddles, steel-guitar and honky tonk pianos and actually sound like, you know, a honest-to-goodness country song. If it were released by another artist, I'd have expected it to be blistering electric guitars with only mandolin and banjo to 'make' the single as a 'country song.'  "You Go Your Way" continues the winning way of songwriter Troy Jones, a writer who is joined by David Lee and Tony Lane to create a slice of neo-country goodness. Jones who wrote "Pretty Good At Drinkin' Beer" and "People Are Crazy") is simply one of the best traditional-minded of the writers making radio hits these days and the pairing with Jackson is perfect. The song is about a guy who takes the best opinion he can about a relationship he didn't want to end.

Alan must've heard "Talk Is Cheap" from the film Country Strong (a song which doesn't appear on either of the film's soundtracks), but finds the star singing a song written by a living legend. That legend, Guy Clark, co-wrote the track with Chris Stapleton and Morgane Hayes, and it fits Alan singing about not taking a moment in life for granted. Like "So You Don't Have To Love Me Anymore," it's as plainspoken and straight-up country as Alan Jackson has ever been and the fact that neither song was written by him certainly is a testament to the strength of Jackson's own songs through the years. 

"Everything But The Wings" has the same simple elegance of "Remember When" and in fact, it could be considered a prequel of sorts to that classic Alan Jackson ballad of marriage and commitment as this one is more about a guy rejoicing in the fact that he found the woman of his dreams who 'makes him feel like an angel.' It may be considered hokey to some but this is what Country music does best, tell the lives of a million people and make the songs feel as if they're about the person who sings the lyrics to the love of their life.

"Dixie Highway" is an interesting track about Alan Jacksons hometown area and is a fun shuffling hot little number which features Zac Brown and some hot pickin' of the mandolin, banjo, guitar and fiddle as a sort of modern bluegrass-style hoe-down. The song also includes some hot honky tonk piano in the instrumental. The tune is fun as fun can be but given its rather long time (nearly seven and a half minutes long), there are multiple instrumentals in the track, it's hard to consider this a potential radio single. 

"She Don't Get High" finds Alan singing the blues about a woman who doesn't feel anything in her relationship with the narrator. It's a man who equates love with 'getting high.' It's a strong and vivid lyric, something that also happens on "Nothin' Fancy."  Previous single "A Long Way To Go" still makes an appearance on Thirty Miles West and while it was nothing real fancy itself, it still worked for a late summer 2010 single.

While Alan Jackson's time as a multi-platinum singing star (which he was for a good portion of his career) may be past him, that doesn't mean he hasn't made an album that rivals Drive, Here In The Real World and Who I Am. In fact, That's the exact level that Thirty Miles West achieves. He felt like he was going through the motions of sorts on Freight Train, his last full-length album for Arista Nashville (Alan's label for 20 years), the artist sounds refreshed and content with making records that he likes, his core audience likes and that is still country music. 

Alan Jackson's Thirty Miles West is meat and potatoes, no-frills country music at it's best.

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