After five long years,
Daryle Singletary returns to recording. From the sound of
Straight from the Heart, it's like he never left.
Singletary has been called many things since the idle 1990s when he began his singing career -- "
new traditionalist," "
neo-traditionalist," etc. -- yet he comes from a different, harder stock of vocalist: he stands tall in the great
honky tonk lineage of singers like
Ernest Tubb,
George Jones, early
Ray Price,
Merle Haggard, and
Buck Owens. The song choices on this set are a mix of modern tunes and
country music standards --
Hag's
"Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down," Jones'
"These Days I Barely Get By" and
"We're Gonna Hold On" (in duet with
Rhonda Vincent),
Hank Cochran's
"Miami, My Amy," Harlan Howard's nugget
"I've Got a Tiger by the Tail" (with
Ricky Skaggs), and
Bob Altman's
"Black Sheep" (with
John Anderson), among others. And for the record, he does these songs straight; he has no need to change an arrangement when his voice is so deep and pure. Certainly the production is a bit on the technological side, but that's the way things are done now, and these are not meant to be archival imitative recordings: they are new readings of heritage material.
Singletary's got enough worldliness in the grain of his delivery to make these songs as relevant now as they were when they were first recorded, and enough chutzpah not to sound overly reverent, either.
Straight from the Heart is a fine hardcore
country music comeback from a truly great singer. ~ Thom Jurek
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