(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )
Dwight Yoakam
Population Me
(Electrodisc/Audium)
Yoakam’s musical stock has sunk as his Hollywood stock has risen, a fact of which he’s no doubt aware and which probably explains why he’s started his own label and begun afresh. Every one of these ten musically rawboned songs is so intimately conversant with a loneliness it’s hard to believe he feels that even more than his films they suggest he really might be a born actor. Or maybe a born accountant: Given the Dixie Chicks’ dwindling sales, there’s commercial shrewdness in making President Bush’s hometown sound good in the otherwise apolitical “Fair to Midland.” Rating: Four slung blades out of five.
Dwight Yoakam
Population Me
(Electrodisc/Audium)
Yoakam’s musical stock has sunk as his Hollywood stock has risen, a fact of which he’s no doubt aware and which probably explains why he’s started his own label and begun afresh. Every one of these ten musically rawboned songs is so intimately conversant with a loneliness it’s hard to believe he feels that even more than his films they suggest he really might be a born actor. Or maybe a born accountant: Given the Dixie Chicks’ dwindling sales, there’s commercial shrewdness in making President Bush’s hometown sound good in the otherwise apolitical “Fair to Midland.” Rating: Four slung blades out of five.
