Hemingway's Whiskey

Kenny Chesney has played NFL football stadiums by the dozen, received 4 Country Music Association as well as 4 consecutive Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year Awards, had nineteen #1 singles, and has sold over 27 million albums and is the only artist in any genre to sell over a million tickets each of the past eight summers. When he made the decision to scale back from touring this year, it was in large part so that he could take the time he wanted to really enjoy the process of making a new studio record. Now, Chesney has released what will perhaps become his most enduring album, Hemingway s Whiskey.
With the lead single "The Boys of Fall," a song that encapsulates the potency of the high school football experience for anyone who s ever put on pads and played under the Friday night lights, Chesney started looking at the themes that have always marked his music and sought to make the songs richer, more nuanced and perhaps offer deeper insight to how they feel or shaped the singer (and the audience s) life.
Having recorded seven albums since his first Greatest Hits, now certified quadruple platinum, Chesney has sung a lot of songs, covered a lot of ground musically and defined a genre that celebrated growing up in small towns, loving the beach and knowing how to kick back. His records are not only the soundtrack of country radio in the 21st century, but are the sound of summer for people who plan their vacations around trips to go see Chesney somewhere each year. read more..

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Chesney Returns by Emgee
Let's face it: Lucky Old Sun (Snys) was crap. Aside from "Down the Road," there wasn't one truly standout song on the album (George Strait's version of "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" was so far superior, it's not even a contest) and "I'm Alive" is perhaps one of the dullest and most boring songs ever. Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates had standout tracks with "Don't Blink" and "Better as a Memory," but those were the highlights and the abysmal cover of Dwight Yoakam's "Wild Ride," just...ugh.



But for the first time since Road & The Radio, Chesney has put out an album that is worth paying the price of a CD for. Perhaps it is because the CD has something that MOST of Chesney's CDs have been lacking since When the Sun Goes Down: depth and variety. Not that "When The Sun Goes Down" didn't have some great moments: "Anything But Mine" and "There Goes My Life" are still great songs to this day. But let's face it: since the release of his first Greatest Hits CD, Chesney has been a beach-comber through-and-through. Which is fine, but it doesn't provide the variety that "Hemingway's Whiskey" finally provides us with.



Chesney mellows himself on this CD. Not "lay out on the beach mellows" or "party all night mellows" but rather takes a bit more of a mature approach, similar to what Brad Paisley did with American Saturday Night. There is something more reflective about the album while Chesney still allows himself to have fun and throw in a good party song ("Coastal"). But he allows himself to learn ("Where I Grew Up"), to think fondly of the past ("The Boys of Fall") and to reflect (the title track).



Well done, Kenny. Keep it up. 4.5 stars.