[allcdcovers]

Music > Albums > Clay Walker - A Few Questions (2003) Retail CD
added on January 23, 2008, at 23:28 by Sarge!

I wasn't wild about the musical end of this album -- Walker and his production are both a bit thin -- but the lyrical content is quite striking. Although Walker only wrote a couple of the songs, this album has a very personal feel, and a sense of cohesion and depth that is all too rare in contemporary pop and country. It opens with the title track, which is one of those lofty efforts that I call "issue songs," a subgenre I don't generally care much for, as it seems opportunistic and contrived. However, on this track (which was also the album's lead single), Walker may surprise a few folks with his sincere questioning of our world's injustice and imbalances, not merely deploring when "bad things happening to good people," but also questioning the privelege and affluence he enjoys as a modern American. Even more surprising is that the album actually continues along in the same vein, for song after song. Walker returns to the issue of American materialism and spiritual drift on songs such as "Everybody Needs Love," the potentially controversial "Jesus Was A Country Boy" (where he sings, "I bet he never had a million dollars/or wore a lot of fancy clothes...") and, most effectively, on "This Is What Matters," where Walker encourages the world to turn off the cell phones and fax lines, and kick back with nature, family and friends for awhile. The album is dedicated, not surprisingly, to "the good Lord," but Walker eschews the self-serving "told you so" smugness that many self-styled Christians drape themselves in, and actually seems to be searching for both answers and for a personal philosophy that will allow him to live life as a good, whole human being, one who is engaged with other people and with the world around him... He's not parading his religion, he's actually exploring his spiritual values, and it's an interesting effort, made all the more thought provoking for the highly commercial context.* This isn't the greatest Nashville-style country I've ever heard, but it is a substantive, earnest album, notable amid an ocean of crass, cynical, individualistic self-involvement. Good for Clay!

front 953 x 953 px

back 1189 x 929 px

cd 953 x 944 px