Periodically, I look at country music from around the world. Australian singer Sinead Burgess has moved to Nashville with her partner Blake O’Connor, and she has been over to the UK to support Kezia Gill this month as well as playing her own London show. We also had four visitors from Canada for the Unapologetically Canadian tour which I wrote about extensively.
Two acts from Canada and one from Australia have put out new music this October, so what do these releases from Jade Eagleson, The Heart Collectors and James Barker Band tell us about contemporary commercial country music outside the USA?
Jade Eagleson – Do It Anyway
Jade Eagleson swept the Canadian CMA Awards in September 2023, winning both Male Artist and Entertainer of the Year. Having won the Rising Star award in 2019, his last album Honkytonk Revival won the 2022 award for Album of the Year. That is a glittering trophy cabinet.
Jade’s voice is a less husky version of Blake Shelton’s, although on the track Rodeo Queen (‘she’s this cowboy’s dream!’) he hits low notes in his range that makes him sound like Jake Owen. His music tackles familiar country themes, including a checklist-y celebration of country life on the smooth A Lot in A Little Town (‘to the farmer it ain’t just rain’). On the self-aware Some Cowboy, which has a nasty production error in the comping in the final chorus, Jade’s narrator remembers that no matter how bad his life is, ‘some old cowboy’s always got it worse’.
Honky Talkin’ is one long pick-up line full of admiration for the object of his affection (‘a neon legend! A Tennessee 11!’) and was a wise single from the album. Ditto the feelgood honky-tonker Shakin’ In Them Boots, where Jade gives his fiddle player Larry and guitar player Charlie the chance to shine. The pedal steel player gets four bars of solo on Still Gonna Be You, which is marked as ‘Jade’s version’ in an homage to Taylor Swift because the song first appeared on his debut EP in 2018.
Jade can also take it down a notch, as on the power ballad Whiskey Around It, whose chorus rhymes ‘benders/Fenders’, and the smooth Coulda Fooled Me. Telluride (‘ride like the wind’) is an outside write with the superb line ‘it takes two to two-step and he don’t want to do-si-do’. Beyond Jake and Blake, his vocals remind me of Alan Jackson, whose costume of a heavy coat and black cowboy hat Jade wears on the album cover. Isn’t it great when country music of today so clearly looks back to the great acts of the past, a continuation of the chain that stretches back 100 years?
The title track is another outside write and, would you believe it, Ashley Gorley has got a song on Jade’s album too. It’s a chugging bit of self-belief with our narrator ignoring the warnings of others in his pursuit of a good time. Larry Fleet co-wrote album closer That’s What Love Looks Like, one of those country songs where an old fella dispenses wisdom to a younger man. I checked to see if Larry has recorded it but he hasn’t, nor is it a cover of the Granger Smith song of the same name.
I won’t spoil the surprise of Steal My Girl, though, which is exactly what you think it is and almost got me out of my seat to applaud whoever picked that song off the shelf! I hope Jade gets over to the UK soon, as I am sure his fellow Entertainer of the Year Brett Kissel has told him good things.
The Heart Collectors – The Space Between
This fifth album from the Australian quartet opens with the track Energy, which starts with a cycle of chords in G minor with a cello providing root notes. The opening line of the vocals are ‘thunder’s calling in the valley’, sung in four-part harmony, with a chorus of ‘the more you give, the more you receive’. That’s what you’re getting here.
Evergreen is not a cover of the Will Young song but an idyllic tune full of fluttering harmonies. It is exactly the sort of ‘cosmic folk-pop’ promised in the accompanying press release, which has done my work for me. Sirius B’s gentle arrangement helps the song act as a blanket around the listener, recalling the work of Mazzy Star or, more recently, Little Big Town and The Wandering Hearts.
Some of the songs have existed for years and were on the band’s first album which has since been deleted. They are newly arranged for instruments including banjo, mandolin, reverb-saturated guitars and the bodhran drum, which I first saw when The Corrs used one and which vocalist Kymrie plays here.
Nature is represented by The Garden and Rocky Mountain, the latter of which has a pleasant arrangement that simultaneously sounds Celtic and Appalachian. There are also two songs of self-actualisation where the listener is told to Stand Up (‘you have the strength to change the world’) and Hold On. This is another twist on what David Bennett has proven is the most popular songtitle in pop music by an absolute mile; the top five includes I Want You, Breathe, Home and Without You.
Travellers is an anthem of universal brotherhood (‘standing strong together’) with plenty of banjo, while there are some fun rhymes in No Separation, where ‘falling in love’s no exception’. Where Light Rests is a waltz-time piano ballad that would fit into a relaxation playlist and where Kymrie’s vocals are full of beauty and poise.
The album ends with three covers of old songs from the hippie era, recorded live in front of an audience: Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock, one of the most lush songs of the hippie era; the Simon & Garfunkel song Kathy’s Song; and Helplessly Hoping by the holy trinity of harmony Crosby, Stills & Nash.
James Barker Band – Ahead of Our Time EP
The CCMA awards for Group/Duo of the Year and Fans’ Choice went to James Barker Band. In the modern way, they don’t put out albums but roll out EPs. Ahead of Our Time is their fourth but also their first not to be released on Universal Canada, having moved to a joint-venture called RECORDS which has been set up by a man called Barry Weiss, who was at Jive Records and (allegedly) turned a blind eye as long as R Kelly, Britney Spears, Chris Brown and NSYNC were making money for the label.
Weiss has since worked with Nelly, who has also had allegations thrown at him. The man who ran Jive, Clive Calder, is the richest man to have ever been involved in pop music and owns a yacht. I expect Barry has been on that yacht. Naturally James and the band didn’t mention Barry Weiss in this interview with Entertainment Focus, but why would they want to rock the boat? In any case, they have done any due diligence and reckon Barry is the one to help them get more of a following with a very perfunctory set of six songs.
The EP’s title track is a power ballad where our narrator reminisces about a lost love, Step On His Boots is a carpe diem meet-cute where James is ‘breaking the ice and breaking his heart’ and Meet Your Mama is a love song where the contemporary production and his vocal make James sound like a cross between Brett Eldredge and Granger Smith.
Those last two tracks and Heartbeat, which is a shuffle about love and stuff, were among four written with Travis Wood, whose name was all over Jade’s album too. On The Water is a Wallenish song written by Hunter Phelps and Ben Johnson about putting on suncream and hitting the ocean. I like the alliterative ‘turn boots into barefeet’ and, with rotten timing, there’s a namecheck for the recently deceased Jimmy Buffett.
Fellow Music Row guru Rodney Clawson was in the room for Champagne, a funky kiss-off where James’ narrator is delighted that his ex has walked out on him. If the goal is to make James Barker and his band sound like a Nashville group, that has been achieved. They came over to the UK for C2C 2019 and promised they would be back soon.
A Country Way of Life 