With his 12th release in 20 years, Freedy Johnston (Official / Myspace) has kept pretty busy. That said, Johnston hasn’t been exactly front-page fodder since before the turn of the century. Hopefully that will change with the release of Rain on the City (Bar None). I am not suggesting this is a comeback album or some sort of return to quality output for him, but this could be the record that helps people remember that the guy who sang “Bad Reputation” actually is still around and still churning out high-caliber music.
This new record is a pure songwriter’s album that rocks with a folkie’s heart prominently featured on it’s sleeve. Love, as always, is the dominant lyrical theme here. While the album showcases a pleasing folk-rock tone, there are touches of both blue-eyed soul (“The Devil Raises His Own”) and post-Replacements Westerberg (“Living To Close To The Rio Grande”) to give the album a spark of variety. Johnston isn’t reinventing the wheel, but producing a solid overall product that requires very little skipping. This album shows Johnston as an artist who has tasted a good bit of fame and commercial success yet has chosen to quietly continue down a road that seems to favor quality over another shot at fleeting top-40 fame.
LISTEN: Freedy Johnston – “Living Too Close to the Rio Grande”
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