John Doe - Country Club reviews
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| Allmusic |
 Punk rock has produced few singers with the strength and chops of X's John Doe, and the force and presence of his vocals (and songwriting) on albums like Wild Gift and Under the Big Black Sun rank with the most satisfying rock & roll of the 1980s. But on Doe's recordings with X's acoustic incarnation, the Knitters, and on his debut solo album, Meet John Doe, he showed he was every bit as gifted with country-influenced material, and for years a handful of X fans has been patiently waiting and wishing for Doe to cut a straight-ahead country album. It took a while, but Doe has finally done it, and he's done it right; Country Club is a collaboration with the great Canadian roots rock combo the Sadies in which they interpret a handful of classic country sides in a style that fuses the moody late-night atmosphere of Nashville's countrypolitan era with the straightforward guitar-based sound of vintage Bakersfield acts like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. As musicians, the Sadies are as tight and as capable as anyone walking into a recording studio these days, and their touch on these songs is all but flawless, fusing Prairie soul with a high lonesome sweetness and a subtle but expressive sense of aural adventure that turn their interpretations of "Night Life" and "Till I Get It Right" into something truly special. And Doe's vocals are a wonder; he never forces false melodrama or histrionics into these performances, but uses his rich, roomy voice to explore the spaces within these tunes with patience and a heart as big as all outdoors. Most country fans have heard "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Detroit City," and "I Still Miss Someone" a few hundred times (at least) from dozens of artists, but Doe makes the heartache in their lyrics real and genuine, and few performers of the Nash Vegas era can match the innate understanding of classic country weepers that Doe reveals on this set. Doe and the Sadies contribute one new song each to these sessions (the band also tosses in two brief instrumentals), and "It Just Dawned on Me" and "Before I Wake" are good enough that you wouldn't guess they weren't copyrighted in the 1960s if you didn't read the credits. Plenty of rock singers have tried to honor the sound and traditions of period honky tonk music over the years, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one who sounds as ineffably right singing this stuff as John Doe, and Country Club is a casual, no-frills masterpiece....full text |
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| Pastemagazine |
| X always mixed in a little country with its rockabilly punk, but Country Club, a new album with Toronto barnstormers the Sadies, is the first time John Doe devoted himself so completely to the genre, covering songs by Roger Miller, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard—and even X. He’s certainly comfortable with the material, and his worn-leather voice conveys an unexpected tenderness that adds spirited desperation to opener “Stop the World and Let Me Off,” gritty regret to “‘Til I Get It Right,” and aching vulnerability to “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” His only dud is Willie Nelson’s “Night Life,” whose arrangement is so forcefully dramatic that he gets a little lost in the mix. On the whole, though, the Sadies know just when to step forward or back, creating a general bootgazer ambience and re-creating the steely Bakersfield licks of Hag’s “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good.” They speed up Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone” and fit it to a Sun Records stomp, but they only really cut loose on instrumentals like “The Sudbury Nickel” and “Pink Mountain Rag,” which shows how country-club refined the album is....full text |
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| Nowtoronto |
| The Sadies have proved themselves master instrumentalists at country and twang, and a fluid backup band able to execute any genre. Doe, who co-fronted seminal L.A. punks X, on the other hand, has a voice you could charitably call serviceable. Whether this collaboration needed to happen is debatable....full text |
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