Everywhere We Go
Modern country fulfills a real musical need. It offers songs about adult issues--relationships, employment, religion, and children--couched in the modern production values familiar to more recent generations. Artists such asRandy Travis,George Strait,Clint Black, andVince Gillhave proven time and time again that slick and down-home are not necessarily incompatible. For it to work, however, requires excellent songwriting and distinctive, emotionally evocative singing. Unfortunately, too much ofEverywhere We Go, Chesney's fifth record, is second-rate material and paint-by-numbers arrangements sung with an emotional sameness that seems to make little distinction between the humor of "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" and the romance of "You Had Me from Hello." For a moment, during "Baptism"--a duet with Randy Travis--Chesney invests some real emotion, and the restrained instruments seem in tune with the joyful yet serious subject matter. Then Travis comes in and demonstrates the vocal power and range that it takes to be the kind of artist that Chesney merely aspires to be.--Michael Ross