Time for another slab of blue collar liberalism from Doug DeJoe and the Bloomlaters with their new album "Headlines".
Doug DeJoe and the Bloomlaters sound 100% mainstream Nashville. The musicianship is top notch with every note played with slick professionalism. Even Doug DeJoe's world weary vocals are right out of the country music playbook. The difference - the unique selling point, if you like - of this band is the wry, perceptive lyrics. You get 16 songs on this album and every one of them looks unsentimentally at life as it actually is the land of the free. All those feeling that real people feel get addressed here all the way from frustration at choices you have made ("My Old Girlfriend") to disenchantment with society ("This Ain't My America"). It's funny to think that only a few years ago, the Dixie Chicks got pilloried for daring to question the right wing "natural order" in song and here we have a rather more eloquent and yet also sentimental take on the very same issues.
With this album, Doug DeJoe and the Bloomlaters give the impression of being the kind of guys that you know even though you have never actually met them. They tell it like it is and I raise my glass to them for that. It's a very human album.
Available by mail order from CD Baby.