I can’t help but feel that I might like this album more if I had followed Brett Detar’s career since his time in The Juliana Theory.  Maybe if I liked The Juliana Theory I would find something compelling about a pop-punk/emo musician I admired crossing over into country.  I might have approached this album completely differently if I didn’t find The Juliana Theory to be unbearably whiny and annoying.  There’s a certain inherent whine to the country genre, telling tales of heartbreak, wandering, and loneliness.  But, when these same sentiments are expressed in this format by a former emo frontman, it’s hard to take it seriously.  It feels like he’s been looking for any excuse to complain, and he’s just using a new genre to try to make more people listen to him list his grievances.  To be clear, I don’t mean to say that Detar hasn’t had his fair share of struggles to overcome.  But when he oddly, jovially sings, “I got the cocaine, whiskey, and heroin blues/I got nothing left to lose,” I just roll my eyes.

There are some good notes to point out on this album.  The instrumentation and production is very clean.  The slide guitar in particular is a nice touch.  For what the album is, Detar made the right decision to go to Nashville and record the album with masters of the trade.  However, nothing about the sound is particularly original.  At its best, the alt-country ballad “Empty House On A Famous Hill” just sounds like a Calexico B-side.

(Ravensong Records, no address provided)