From the sublime...

Among the more offensive tactics of the record industry is their habit of trying to replicate success by rehashing the same old thing over and over again. This flogging of the dead horse attitude extends of course to TV commissioning editors, and it's a sure sign that creativity and originality are both ill-recognised and in short supply.

Gretchen Wilson rocketed onto the scene with her Here For the Party debut in May last year. I remarked at the time that the record was quite good, once you got past the headline "Redneck Woman" type stuff at the front end of the record. Beginning with the 4th track, and setting aside the awful rapping on one track and the cringeworthy autobiographical song at the end, it was a decent set of songs.

A year or so on, I confess to not playing it much, but I stumped up for the new one anyway. From this perspective, it's clear that the seeds of her downfall (in my estimation) were always there. Here, the pandering to the party crowd knows almost no limits, and a series of familiar country melodies and riffs mixed with embarrassing contemporary references (bling, Par1s H1lton, and Bush-ist button-pushing) washes over you indifferently.

At a stretch, there are two decent tracks on this. Track 8, written by Matraca Berg, is called "I Don't Feel Like Loving You Today," and it stands out like a diamond in a sea of barbecue briquettes. The tenth track, "Raining on Me," also sounds like a Berg title, and it's a decent song. Tellingly, these two are the ones most reminiscent of the tracks on her debut that I thought showed the steel beneath the gold-plated party songs.

The final (bonus) number is an example of the fashionable gimmick I spotted on Faith Hill's Fireflies - using vintage recording techniques (and equipment?) to sound authentic. "4 players, 1 singer, 1 microphone, 1 take," she says. Er, thanks. That she feels the need to blow this trumpet kind of spoils the effect, but it's a nice recording - a ribbon microphone? I don't know.

At a pinch, you could download those three. If you like the "party" vibe, you might like the rest. As to the track "Politically Uncorrect," I find it grossly offensive to hear someone parrot Bushisms about ordinary working people who love "the Flag" getting no respect with a Bush in the White House. What more do these fucking people want? Hurricane Katrina showed everybody in the world just who it is in America that gets no respect.

Another offensive, not to say moronic, moment is the song "Skoal Ring", in which she trumpets the virtues of this particular brand of dipping tobacco, and how she desires a fellow who shares her habit. Apparently, she has been warned about the part of her live act in which she takes a tin of said tobacco out of her back pocket, lest it make children think it's cool to "dip." Not that she's stopped performing the song. "Daddy, what's a Skoal ring?" Here's Wikipedia's take on the subject:

While using dip, the pinch sits just behind one's lower lip, a spot where blood vessels are close to the skin and plentiful. The nicotine works its way into the user's blood vessels through the saliva naturally created in their mouth.
The user then has to spit out any saliva that has come in contact with the dip, as it can be extremely nauseating if swallowed. Even after the dip has been removed from the mouth, high levels of nicotine still exist on the inner part of the lower lip, leaving the user most likely spitting for a while after the dip was removed.

And, kids: apart from the brown stains you're likely to develop on your lower lip, and the smell of your breath, and the utterly disgusting spitting habit you'll need to develop, apart from all that: tobacco causes cancer. Don't matter if you don't smoke it. Stick it up your nose: nose cancer. Rub it on your lips: lip cancer. Chew it in your mouf: mouth cancer. Rub it in your eye: eye cancer, etc etc.

Anyone wanna buy two Gretchen Wilson CDs?