Jerrod Niemann had a pretty good reputation among the group of country listeners who had heard him. With albums ‘Judge Jerrod & The Hung Jury’ and ‘Free The Music’, he was respected in much the same way as David Nail; as the underrated modern country songsmith who never got the airplay or the acclaim he deserved. Factions of the country music community tend to be dedicated to acts such as these; those whose music straddles the line between country and adult contemporary, with just the right amount of soulful vocals and stories to hook fans into the same old argument of “he’s so underrated”. It’s not that I’m being cynical of the artists per se, more the “indie attitude”. But it seems that both David Nail and Jerrod Niemann decided enough was enough this year/last year, because both released big, commercial lead singles to their albums. Nail, with an upbeat, poppy, obsessed with an enigma of a woman song, Niemann with an auto-tuned, electro-pop drinking tune. And it’s the latter where things start to get confusing.
I wasn’t overly familiar with Jerrod’s music I must say, and perhaps my comments above give that away. Still, I took a listen to a select few tracks prior to writing this review, just to see where he was coming from, because I wasn’t particularly impressed with ‘Drink To That All Night’. It’s true, he’s had some drinking songs, but these appear to be sandwiched between surfer pop-inspired adult contemporary, often dealing with the emotions and situations surrounding the potential end of a relationship, the blurred lines (that aren’t as rapey as Robin Thicke). The country labelling likely comes from following similar trends of production and sound that exist in the music of other modern country artists. It all gets lumped in the same, that and there’s country themes and references thrown in there.
So when it comes to ‘High Noon’, there’s both parts that make sense and parts that appear absolutely contrived. What is absolutely interesting is that probably the better songs and the worst songs are all outside cuts; Jerrod seems to have had a hand in writing all of the vanilla tracks, those that don’t tempt as much of a reaction as obviously the ones he has picked. That’s not to say that he’s a bad songwriter, perhaps that he knows what he wants more than he can produce it, or maybe this was just a bad run for him. ‘Space’ is both an odd choice of an opener and one of the better recordings here. It feels like a mid-album cut and doesn’t launch us in very well, but it also has a great grasp on the positive aspects of adult contemporary, some pretty piano work, and a particularly nice melody, especially on the chorus. Plus, we’re treated to the kind of lyric that Jerrod clearly has a soft spot for; it’s not going to win Song of the Year, but it does tackle some of the emotions surrounding the grey area of relationships ending.
Another song that follows in this pattern is ‘I Can’t Give In Anymore’, probably my favorite song on the album. Sounding exactly like Irish pop/rock group The Script, the song is lush with soulful vocals, strong melodies, and a lyric telling the story of a relationship, in this case where the narrator is the only one fighting for it, and has decided to get up and leave. Jerrod’s voice even sometimes sounds like Danny O’Donoghue, lead singer of The Script. Richie Brown and Brad Passons, the writers on this track, also have a hand in writing ‘Come On, Come On’, an initially drum-looped, electronic pot of bizarre, turned into a sweet, surfer pop, singalong, that’s actually really infectious. Similar to this, but with a far more country feel, is ‘Day Drinkin’’, another outside cut that is sonically okay, but lyrically banal and rather trivial.
This seems sadly become a blueprint for the album. ‘Buzz Back Girl’, the Lee Brice-penned drunk-on-love metaphor; ‘Beach Baby’, another beachy Kenny Chesney/Jake Owen track; ‘We Know How To Rock’, an over-produced rocky cut with one of the better melodies on the album; ‘Lucky #7’, a slightly sinister-sounding, electronically-advanced bad play on the numbers people attribute to others for attractiveness; ‘The Real Thing’, a big band-inspired less-than-subtle attempt to reassure fans that he’s not in this for the money, but for the real music, disguised as a colliding of rich and poor worlds when a relationship begins. Admittedly, the latter track is interesting purely for this fact alone, because the lyrical content is not only quite different from its peers, it brings up this question of reading between the lines.
The remainder of the tracks are as surface as those I have already mentioned, however. ‘Refill’ is a fairly clichéd track about leaving his hometown but missing his baby, so coming back to refill his soul after life in the big bad city, it’s saved a little by some wonderful harmonica that gives it an old school feel. ‘She’s Fine’, the closing track featuring Colt Ford, chooses to completely reject his adult contemporary, surfer pop home and opt for some ridiculous electro-rap song that treats a woman as a sexual object with more awful lyrics, including the exact same verse melody as Tim McGraw’s ‘Lookin’ For That Girl’. And then there’s ‘Donkey’, a crude, sexually explicit, pathetic attempt at comedy, that is trying too hard to be funny, too hard to be “gangsta”, and too hard to be bro. It’s just plain bad, from Jerrod’s rapping (not his calling) to the mock donkey braying that is sprinkled all over the song.
Jerrod didn’t know what he was doing when he recorded this album. If he really believes that he’s exploring new avenues in country and pushing boundaries, he’s severely short-sighted and too close to his project. All he’s done is copy The Script, copy Kenny Chesney, copy Jake Owen, copy Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson and Matt Wertz and The Fray and copy bro-country. He’s copied Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line and Tim McGraw and he’s added more auto-tune and more electronic sounds. That is it. It’s just based around the small, initial shock factor, and I imagine his ill-advised words on the subject have fooled half of the “reviewers” online. What’s more, even with the inclusion of a couple of good-ish songs, when the album is finished you don’t feel like you’ve consumed anything. There’s no substance, no weight to it. You don’t feel satisfied. It’s just empty.
And for an artist who was “so underrated”, who only sold 14,000 copies in ‘High Noon’’s first week of sales but had to release the awful ‘Drink To That All Night’ to do it, that’s nothing to celebrate. Write this one off as a lesson well-learned.
