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" What It Is" is the sixth full length studio album from American singer-songwriter Hayes Carll, released 15th February 2019 through Dualtone Music Group, Inc.
The sixth full-length release for the Nashville-based Texas-born singer-songwriter was co-produced by Brad Jones and Allison Moorer (who also co-wrote several songs).
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 78, based on 5 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
User Album Review
Three years after the self-probing drama of 2016’s Lovers And Leavers, Carll is back with What It Is, his sixth studio album that finds the 43 year old settling into his role as middle-aged master craftsman and truthteller.
Songs like “Times Like These,” “American Dream” and “Fragile Men” form the thematic core of Carll’s latest. The latter song is a barbed commentary on masculinity, and the former a rockabilly reflection on a nation plagued by dismay and oppression. But it’s “American Dream” that shines most brightly, a bittersweet tale of journey-taking that still manages to find a shred of naive hope and beauty in national myth-making.
The vast majority of What It Is is well-worn sonic territory for Carll, ranging between roadhouse country, sensitive folk and roots-rock. Between the humorous relationship love-hate strife of “None’ya” and the devoted plea of “I Will Stay,” Carll bookends his otherwise character-based latest offerings with personal offerings that stand among some of the more emotionally affective originals he’s written.
For anyone expecting a stark left-turn from the songwriter, What It Is will be a let-down. But the record’s greatest strength is also what makes it predictable: as Carll settles into the warm consistency and careful craft of middle-career, he’s less interested in proving who he is than in refining what he does best.
Reviewed by Jonathan Bernstein for americansongwriter.com.
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