Album Review: Alan Jackson – Freight Train

The classic line about any new Alan Jackson album–that you always know what you’re going to get because the formula never changes–hasn’t been as true of late: In the past few years, the lanky Georgian has released a stripped-down gospel collection, a moody, loungy AC album helmed by Alison Krauss and an ambitious 17-track solo songwriter showcase that clocked in at well over 70 minutes.

Given those adventurous outings, Freight Train is the first ‘regular’ Alan Jackson album since 2004′s What I Do. While you can’t quite call it a return to form–the three intervening albums were all pretty strong in their own right, though Good Time could have stood to shed a few tracks–it certainly is a return to a more familiar mode, and one that still fits Jackson (and his audience) as comfortably as ever.

Known for championing the cause of the common “meat and potato man,” Jackson’s in familiar territory from the opening lines of Freight Train, as “Hard Hat and a Hammer” begins with “Lace-up boots and faded jeans/A homemade sandwich, half a jug of tea/Average Joe, average pay/The same ol’ end, the same ol’ day.” It’s in this opening, too, that we are first reminded of just how seamlessly Jackson and longtime producer Keith Stegall work together, as percussive pike clinks smartly evoke the drone of manual labor at a thousand dusty job sites.

The main order of the day, though, is love. Wistful heartbreak ballads “Every Now and Then” and “Taillights Blue” (the latter cowritten by Jackson’s nephew, Adam Wright) are up there with any the singer has recorded to date, while the randy “I Could Get Used to This Lovin’ Thing” has all the verve of early George Jones. Meanwhile, chances taken on Fred Eaglesmith’s chugging “Freight Train” and the Vern Gosdin cover “Till the End” (a duet with Lee Ann Womack) pay off very handsomely indeed. Sounding neither as unhinged as Eaglesmith nor as bereft as Gosdin, Jackson injects both with his own stately charm, offering faithful renditions that avoid mimicry. Those hip to the fact that Womack has one of the best classic country voices around won’t be surprised to hear her matching him note for note on the Gosdin tribute.

It’s well that Jackson does include some outside material, since it’s two of his own solo compositions – lively but forgettable up-tempo “That’s Where I Belong” and plumb boring “Big Green Eyes” – that impress the least. By the time he wraps up with sweet devotionals “True Love Is a Golden Ring” (cowritten by Jackson and previously recorded by The Wrights) and “The Best Keeps Getting Better” (which sounds like an expansion on the Possum’s “Once You’ve Had the Best”), you’ll be willing to forgive him those minor missteps.

Like many Alan Jackson albums before it, Freight Train is easy to take for granted, but possessive of a magic that’s not so easy to recreate, judging from the slew of artists who’ve come and gone in the two decades since Jackson first quietly charmed his way into America’s heart. As the 51-year-old singer plots his next move – this album fulfills his Arista contract – Freight Train is an encouraging affirmation of the values that got him to this point, and a reminder that his gifts are still as relevant as ever.