Drums machines are evil. They are a tool of Satan. I don't care if J.J. Cale used one. J.J. Cale can get away with it. When I first opened this disc up and saw that there was a drum machine used, I almost didn't bother listening to it, much less reviewing it. When I put it in the player and the first thing I heard was a synthisizer, then that damn drum machine kick in I was reaching for the eject button. Then the drums got funky, a lap steel kicked in and an acoustic guitar started this cool finger picking roll. Hey, this is kind of cool!

This ain't country. There's a lot of acoustic guitar, and that lap steel, and the occasional dobro and fiddle add just enough twang to keep me interested. But the real draw is not the instrumentation. It's not Warren's warm voice. It's the words, those words just sucked me in. This is damned good songwriting. Especially "Josephus Cries", a song about a Civil War vet who cries when he cuts pine trees to obtain the tar for the making of turpentine, he sees the sap as the blood of the trees. Or "I Want Her Faith," a song about the quiet faith of an 80-year-old woman. It's these songs. They would work no matter what the instrumentation.

This is kind of acoustic/pop/folk/funk. A lot like Jesse Colin Young maybe. Hell I don't know what it's like, I just know that it's different than everything else out there. It ain't country, but it's good. Damned good.

Jeff Wall