Send "Josh Turner " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Ew |
 Josh Turner has the best baritone in the business, a sexy Carolina rumble that can work either frisky or sincere. He's devoted to traditional arrangements, and he's packed this fourth album, Haywire, with steel guitar, fiddles, and two-stepping beats. But not far beyond the delights of the first single, "Why Don't We Just Dance," Haywire gets bogged down by increasingly hokey love songs — she's sweet as a honeybee hive, people! — and that voice deserves much better. B–...full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| Blessed with a rich baritone that is one of the most distinctive voices in modern country, Josh Turner has struggled to this point in his career to find material that is equally as distinctive. He's had isolated moments of real inspiration since breaking through with the new gospel standard "Long Black Train," but records like Your Man and Everything Is Fine were uneven efforts characterized by filler. That problem continues on his fourth album, Haywire, a stuffy, aesthetically conservative set of songs at odds with Turner's stated intentions of loosening up a bit. While there's something downright quaint about Turner's relative modesty (there's no trace of a double entendre or ulterior motive on lead single "Why Don't We Just Dance," and the title track never gets more risqué than a reference to a woman's frayed denim shorts), and there's no reason to doubt his sincerity, the greater effect of so much restraint is that Haywire, much like his previous efforts, comes across as sterile. There are songs about his wife's smile, being there for his kids, and Jesus, and they're all fine enough for what they are, but most of this is the kind of material that one would expect a grizzled genre veteran to be singing well into the twilight years of his career, not necessarily the kind of album that a young A-list country star would make. As the soulful, R&B-infused "Lovin' You on My Mind" makes clear, Turner has a voice tailor-made for songs that at least hint at the sex, sin, and vice of the best country music, but too much of the remainder of the album reads like True Love Waits literature. To his credit, Turner makes a game effort at bringing some life and personality to songs like "As Fast as I Could" and "Eye Candy" (a middling attempt at the type of humorous ditties that have made Brad Paisley's career), but he can only overcome so many dull platitudes and awkward rhymes. Turner's longtime collaborator Frank Rogers does his best to enliven the material, balancing Turner's sharp, staunch traditionalist instincts with some surprising flourishes: The old-timey string-band arrangement on "Your Smile" elevates an otherwise pedestrian song, and the terrific rhythm section on "All Over Me" hints at the kind of freewheeling tone the album might have had if the material took even a solitary risk. Instead, Haywire is pure vanilla, pleasant enough but not adding anything of note to Turner's catalogue beyond a couple of new singles for his eventual greatest-hits anthology....full text |
| Billboard |
| J osh Turner's 2004 breakthrough hit, "Long Black Train," reminded country fans how rare and celebrated such thrilling, deep-baritone voices have been throughout the genre's history. And while Turner is a worthy heir to such barrel-chested baritones as Don Williams, Randy Travis and Trace Adkins, his fourth album, "Haywire," is a study in inconsistent use of his vocal gift. On the single "Why Don't We Just Dance," Turner avoids oversinging, instead letting his voice communicate through the song's message, resulting in one of the album's best tracks. Conversely, on the remake of Williams' 1987 hit ballad "I Wouldn't Be a Man," Turner overuses his low register, when a more restrained approach would've improved the take. Meanwhile, trite and sometimes awkward lyrics diminish some tracks that contain great instrumentals. But the album's finest moment is the choir-backed spiritual "The Answer," where Turner sings, "If you're lookin' for somebody you can talk to/When the heartache and the troubles overcome you/There's a man you can count on."-Wade Jessen...full text |
Josh Turner lyrics
|
| |||||||
