Album Review: Robert Earl Keen

Robert Earl Keen's latest album, September's Ready For Confetti, certainly displays the Texas Country legend finding familiar territory from his earlier days.  I definitely mean this in a positive sense.  A friend to me once described Keen as "Texas' Jimmy Buffet", a title he meant in a complementary way but that I vehemently disagreed with given his masterworks throughout the late 1980s and 1990s that were littered with beautiful observational songwriting and stylistic explorations that ranged from blues, folk, and traditional country (and I f***ing hate Jimmy Buffet).  Even his most well known and party-ready anthem, "The Road Goes On Forever (and the Party Never Ends)" has a gripping subtext and star-crossed love story that breezes over the average passive listener.  This stripped down on-air performance from the early Nineties displays this better.

In retrospect though, I can see how much his work throughout the Aughts (especially his bigger hits) would lend some from my generation to think this is the case.  That's not to say these albums didn't have songs I enjoy (see "The Rose Hotel", "Ride", "For Love"), but they were spotty at best and failed to reach the potential that albums like his 1987 masterwork, A Bigger Piece of Sky, or 1997's Walking Distance achieved. That said his new album is his most enjoyable work from end to end in years.  Beginning with "Black Baldy Stallion", Keen starts off a the right note by setting the wandering-drifter tone beautifully displayed on albums like A Bigger Piece of Sky.  The second song and title track slides back into the "Texas Buffet" territory, but will likely be able to cross-over a get him some radio play eventually.  The third track and first single though, "I Gotta Go", is perhaps the album's best with classic Keen aspects.  With a bluesy lead riff and Keen-esque storytelling lyrics, I'm glad he or whoever chose for the lead off single to show he's going for a more organic feeling on his new album.

The record hits its mid-album stride with solid tracks like the emotionally charged "Lay Down My Brother" and the biting yet cheekily self-aware "The Road Goes On and On".  He starts the finally stretch with a cover of extremely underrated country-folk artist Todd Snider's "Play a Train Song", something that doesn't depart too far from the original (it doesn't really need to) and is a nice nod to friend and fellow alt-countryer.  He also questionably reworks his own "Paint the Town Beige" off of Sky without much changes either.  However with some of my favorite lyrics in country ( like "I traded for a songbird a bigger piece of sky"), hopefully this can point some of Earle's younger fans to his older work.  The album closes with the emotional "Soul of Man" that serves as an effective bookend to the album. 

All in all, this is his easily his best and most solid album in years and by this point has become his best selling as well.  Hopefully this album will continue to help him keep his audience both of old school alternative country and also of fans from the Texas country movement of the best years.  Either way, this Keen doing his thing and doing it well.  Here's an old acoustic performance of "Paint the Town Beige" because, well, it kicks ass.