Night To Remember
Before scoring his own hits, Joe Diffie was a sought-after demo singer. In part, that was because he has a fantastic voice but also because he can sound like anybody. OnA Night to Remember, he phrases likeGeorge StraitorGeorge Jonesat one moment, then he'sJohn AndersonorAlan Jacksonthe next; he even nails an imitation of theMavericks' Raul Malo on the chorus of "Better Off Gone." Without a distinctive voice, though, Diffie winds up being only as good as his songs, which are pretty good here, although too often they're swallowed by arena-sized arrangements at odds with their intimate content. The desperate "Are We Even Yet," however, balances loud and quiet just right, and on an old-school Harlan Howard ballad called "Don't Our Love Look Natural," Diffie sounds like he's preparing a demo for the nextGene Watsonsingle--wonderful, in other words, but still not distinctively Diffie.--David Cantwell