Comments on: Album Review: Kathy Mattea – Coal

By: ccf

ccf — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:35:32 +0000

Yes Matt B.

I did post at the old Country Weekly boards. Did you and what was your SN?

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:55:33 +0000

Hey CCF, did u used to write at ‘the basement’ on the old country weekly boards back in the day?

By: ccf

ccf — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:25:09 +0000

I got my ver from emusic. There are two bonus tracks you can only get there. I really like this cd. In fact I can see it making the number one spot on my top ten list this year.

By: Leeann

Leeann — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:13:58 +0000

“harlan” was disappointing to me as well. I loved Paty Loveless’ version and I don’t know if I’ll ever like another better, to be fair to Kathy though. Over all, I liked the album. Like Brady said, I don’t think it’s something I’d listen to every day, but I don’t regret making the purchase. I like some of the others could have used a little more tempo, but I understand that the point of this album was not to glamorize coal mining, so up-tempo could be a little too fun. I did like The L& N, for the record.

By: Chris N.

Chris N. — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:06:56 +0000

No one’s a bigger sucker for concept albums than me, but the whole feel of the record seems a little distant. Coal mining is gritty, dirty work, but there’s something really clean and austere about the record. If any version of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” fails to make me cry, something ain’t right.

By: Brady Vercher

Brady Vercher — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:57:25 +0000

The thing with this album is that it has a purpose other than mass appeal and places the weight on the lyrics rather than arrangements and production. The production perfectly supports the albums purpose and it’d be a little weird for it to vary too much. That it’s a little one-dimensional doesn’t detract from the quality. I don’t think I could get excited to put this on repeat and listen to it for days on end (although I pretty much did for this review), but that doesn’t mean the quality of the album isn’t appreciable.

SW, the Cash version of “L&N” isn’t really much more uptempo than Mattea’s version, it just has that epic feeling of Cash’s voice and places more weight on the arrangement, although Mattea has the cool fiddle intro. The horns in Cash’s version were kinda cheesy. In the context of the album, I thought “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” was great, but if you focus solely on that song, then I guess I can understand it being a little disappointing–which might be true for a few songs, but I think for an album like this, everything needs to be evaluated in the context of the album rather than on it’s own.

By: SW

SW — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:26:52 +0000

I got bored with this album in a hurry. I’d echo Matt C’s comment about an uptempo song or two. Consider “L&N,” Cash’s version was an uptempo version, so I don’t think it would have been impossible to add some tempo. This may be my own biases talking, but when I saw “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” on the album I got very excited, but found her rendition sub-par.

By: Matt C.

Matt C. — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:37:38 +0000

Well, some of the one-dimensionality comes from the the fact that it’s a concept album. Because these projects are so rare these days, I think it’s hard even for critics to assess an album like this. I thought that the album would have been improved with an up-tempo song or two, but still an outstanding effort that I feel is the best release of the year so far: I give it 4.5-5 stars.

By: Jim Malec

Jim Malec — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:29:30 +0000

I’m with Chris. The album was excellent, but it was also one-dimensional.

By: Chris N.

Chris N. — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:04:05 +0000

Just didn’t drive me crazy.