What a great little late career record this is. With all the death and sadness country music has been suffering from lately, it feels so good to get something special from a guy you remember fondly from the past, who proves he still has plenty to offer in the present. You don’t need to rely on weepy-eyed reflection or nostalgia to get into this record.
At 65-years-old and coming off serious health issues, John Anderson is feeling a little reflective these days. The caramel-voiced country crooner who we could talk about having a strong candidacy for the Country Music Hall of Fame in the coming years is being coy about what exactly the health scare was, you can tell he’s lost some weight.
What ‘Years’ has that so many albums fail to capture is a trump card that supersedes all other concerns, benchmarks, and gradients. It’s the part of music you can never learn, never practice up, never teach or toil to capture. Either you have it, or you don’t. And Sarah Shook has it. She has it in spades.
The good news about great artists releasing new albums just keeps coming, setting up 2018 as a potential bumper crop year of critically-acclaimed releases, with the latest being Bloodshot Records signee Sarah Shook and her band The Disarmers announcing the release of her sophomore record “Years” on April 6th.