Review Summary: We are worth it.
A gentle summer breeze fills the air, smoothly wafting over the endless waves of grain that surround me in all directions. I sit calmly in my rocking chair. I’m on a porch of all white, somewhere in the most unassuming part of the country. I’ve never been to this place, and yet I have. I’ve been here before and I will be here again. I know it’s there and I can hear myself there now.
No other work of art makes me feel as uniformly comfortable as
Home does. It’s like a warm embrace from a loved one. It’s inexplicably trustworthy and incorruptible. If there’s any proof that there’s good in us as a species, it’s somewhere on this album.
All this might seem a bit like hyperbole, but I assure you that -- at least to myself -- there is nothing further from the truth.
The Dixie Chicks were on top of the world when they came out with
Home. They had just become the biggest country act in history and had won a major lawsuit against Sony Music (which had been cutting them out of their royalties). They found themselves finally happy, with loving families at home in Texas, without pressure from any labels or executives.
Where their previous two albums
Fly and
Wide Open Spaces took country-pop to exciting, unprecedented heights,
Home features the Chicks in a far more pensive and thoughtful state. Gone was the sass and spunk of yore, and on came gorgeous musicianship and blissful emotion.
Don’t let the opener “Long Time Gone” fool you; inside the restless and bouncy tune is a lamenting view of country music these days, offering insight to the life of a young man trying to make it big in the industry before crashing back down to his hometown for a life full of mediocrity and bad music on the radio. Other upbeat tracks on the record share a similar fate; while they may seem like throwaway songs each and every one has a method to their madness. But this isn’t where the heart of the music is.
Indeed, once you get past the opener you’re greeted with the most devastating one-two punch on the album. First comes the best cover of Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide” ever released, every note and harmony perfected to an almost ridiculous degree. The follow-up “Traveling Soldier” is the easiest to recommend to anyone looking for a simple summation of what the album has to prove. What easily could have been a stark condemnation of war becomes a heartbreaking tale of personal loss. There’s no pretensions of changing the world here, only the anguish of losing a loved one that had quickly changed your life forever.
Other devastating ballads include the heart-wrenching doubt of “A Home,” in which one choice made years ago causes endless shockwaves through the narrators life, and “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams).” I may not have any children, nor hopefully will I for a long while, but this song has possibly been the greatest influence I’ve had on the decision to have a child. The love in singer Natalie Maines’ voice and even in the very chords of the guitar sends images of my future self tucking them in to bed down to me as I sit here now.
If you couldn’t tell by now, nearly every song seems focused on one very singular and powerful feeling, and then it instantly manages to get it just right for the listener to process. The fact that even the ridiculously infectious “Lil’ Jack Slade” seems to have something important on its mind despite being only a bluegrass instrumental serves as a testament to the purpose of this album.
Even the weaker (which is a higher relative term in this instance) tracks on the album, such as “Tortured Tangled Hearts,” which caught in a purgatory between the aforementioned bouncy and pensive sides to this album, manages to craft an affecting and interesting tale of what is and isn’t meant to be.
Perhaps the most arresting thing about the album is the sustained atmosphere throughout -- while there are a wide variety of sounds and styles present here, there’s an underlying warmth and calm that wraps the entire album up like a blanket.
Of course, this is all without mentioning the cataclysmic closer “Top of the World.” Never before have so many conflicting feelings of guilt, love, weakness, anger, hope, and loneliness ever been at once so unified and palpable. Each line and emotion piles on top of each other until the song collapses into a devastating cry for meaning and forgiveness, even if there is none. I can’t think of a single time I’ve listened to this song without being torn apart on the inside.
At the end of the day,
Home simply isn’t just a great album. It’s the greatest achievement that country music has to offer, and possibly one of the greatest accomplishments of music as an art form yet. There’s no grand statement here, it’s simply about us and our emotion. It unashamedly reminds us what it is to feel, to love, and to be human. And how while all three of these things may be hard and fearful, each one of them is absolutely worth it.
