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| Popmatters |
 I keep hearing new songs about the apocalypse, the reckoning, about hell being here already in the lives of the poor and the downtrodden, and heaven being an unknown. The theme crosses genres—like YACHT’s album-length warning against dreams of the afterlife becoming a replacement for engagement with the world as it exists now to Brad Paisley’s song about personal hells being worse than any afterlife-hell could be. Leave it to Dolly Parton to be the cheeriest about it, on her new album’s leadoff track “In the Meantime”, while singing the same essential message: We don’t know what’s going to happen when, so let’s make the most of things here, even in the face of pain and despair. None of this is new, Parton reminds us: “You know people been talking about the end of time / Ever since time began / We’ve been living in the last days / Ever since the first day / Ever since the dawn of man.” Parton, unlike some of the others, is a steadfast believer in the divine, but also an eternal optimism and sentimentalist who nonetheless has written and sung numerous stark portraits of despair that make her come off more like a realist. From the beginning of her career, she has sung about humankind’s capacity for both horrible deeds and beautiful ones: forgiveness, tenderness, generosity. “Eden’s garden waits within,” she sings. Better Day seems a quintessential Parton sentiment. Like her music as a whole, the title song acknowledges how horrible life can be (“We’ve seen enough hell right here and right now”) while mostly mounting an argument, tinged with spirituality, for determination and hard work, for always pushing forward, clinging to the hope that things will get better. As a theme for a Parton album, it reminds me of her 1973 album Bubbling Over, with its cover photo of a smiling Parton’s face rising upward on top of a gushing water fountain. That album put a happy face, and happy title track, forward but contained a well of sad songs. Better Day is like that too, though the sadness is, in most songs, more hidden. She also has butterflies flying around the cover art, reminding us of her tribute to love’s power for happiness but also its fragility—“Love Is Like a Butterfly”, from her 1974 album of the same name....full text |
| Latimesblogs |
| In case you were wondering, Dolly Parton did not throw her lot in with Harold Camping, the Oakland-based radio personality who famously predicted that Judgment Day would take place last month. “Nobody knows when the end is coming, but some people tell you they do,” Parton sings at the top of her new studio album. “It might be today, it might be tomorrow, or in a million years or two.” Perhaps her disbelief derives from her professional obligations: With a fresh record out and a world tour about to begin — it hits the Hollywood Bowl July 22 and 23 — this 65-year-old showbiz veteran can hardly afford a vacation, permanent or otherwise. More than that, though, Parton’s artistic project simply runs counter to the notion of surrender. She’s country music’s ultimate can-do gal, a reputation “Better Day” deepens with a dozen bright-eyed originals about painting rainbows in the sky and finding satisfaction with both Champagne and chocolate milk. Stylistically, “Better Day” lands somewhere between Parton’s recent bluegrass albums and 2008’s “Backwoods Barbie,” which the singer’s public-relations apparatus billed as her long-awaited return to “mainstream country.” In “Just Leaving” and “Somebody’s Missing You” she deploys rootsy string-band arrangements with banjo and fiddle, while the pumped-up power ballad “Holding Everything” sounds like Kelly Clarkson covering Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”...full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| Grindstones and rhinestones, that made up my life,” Dolly Parton writes on the driving “The Sacrifice,” a dobro-laced song about work ethic and commitment, “but I’ve shined like a diamond through sacrifice.” With things being tough all over, count on Dolly Parton to grab a handful of sparkle and let it shine. After a serious foray into rootsgrass, the undisputed heavyweight champ of modern country returns to the mainstream with a collection that reflects her unsinkable tenacity and charm. Downhome but polished, Parton and producer Kent Wells create an often pop-country gem that empowers as it punches country radio’s clichés with a freshness that says “real country is more engaging than warmed over AC and AOR with fiddles on it.” With a harmonica blast and a chugging beat, Parton takes on the notion of hysteria over end-times, advising to bask in the glory of now on “In The Meantime.” That gospel undertone and practicality permeates Better Day, whose languid blues-tinged title track is threaded with fiddle and stride piano, as well as the dobro/fiddle-steeped article of perseverance through faith “Just Leaving” Pragmaticism never sounded so plucky—or fun. When Parton gets practical, refusing to buckle and finding her inner strength on “Shine Like The Sun,” country girls thrive, not just survive....full text |
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