Coming Home
Lonestar lead singer Richie McDonald is the Conway Twitty of his generation. He knows what women want--as lovers, wives, and mothers. And since he's also the band's principal songwriter, he means to give it to them. That--and the major success of 1999's "Amazed"--is how Lonestar became the sappiest band in country-pop, building a repertoire of over-the-top ballads filled with romantic fantasies (the slowhand husband who takes his time making love, the devoted father who wilts at the sight of a sippy cup), all shot straight to the heart on the arrow of McDonald's emotional tenor. ThoughComing Home, the group's eighth album, features a new producer (Justin Niebank), the formula hasn't really changed. "I Am a Man," "I'll Die Tryin'," "I Never Needed You," and "I Just Want to Love You" all trade in fevered desire of one sort or another, even if Sara Evans couldn't possibly sound more disinterested in McDonald on "I Never Needed You." But Niebank also tries to break it up a bit, although he doesn't push the band to get particularly original, or take the tempo out of the mid-zone. "You're Like Comin' Home" is really less about finding refuge in a woman's arms than about capturing Keith Urban's catchy and sophisticated brand of ear candy, while "What's Wrong With That," another declaration of fatherly bliss, sounds suspiciously like a rewrite of Tim McGraw's "Something Like That."  "Little Town" and "Two Bottles of Beer" mine two current songwriting stereotypes--the virtues of small-town America, and the tiresome Jimmy Buffett fixation. "Wild," a contrived song about a curvaceous babe who saves it all for her man, feeds into typical male fantasies, not female. And "When I Go Home Again" gets down with the hoedown sound, just to remind you that this is supposed to be country music. Lonestar will never be raw and unvarnished in the style of so many other singer-songwriters from Texas. But what's missing is a song that dares to not play it safe, or even one that sounds as if it hadn't been written by committee. If Lonestar ever wants to bring things back to reality, the follow up toComing Homewill beMoving Out. Remember when hillbillies sang the blues?--Alanna Nash