Album Review: All Over the Road by Easton Corbin

Many country singers want you to believe that they're hell-raising cowboys bent for whiskey and wild times come Friday night, but Easton Corbin is clearly not one of them. Or at least he isn't on his second album, 2012's All Over the Road; while Corbin sounded like he had the makings of a modern-day honky tonk hero on his self-titled debut, here he comes off like the nicest guy in Nashville, well-mannered and well-meaning throughout. If Corbin has a vice, it's women, since every song on the album has him singing about some girl who gets him so excited he can hardly drive (the title tune), looks too pretty to break up with ("That's Gonna Leave a Memory"), broke his heart after a summer romance ("Hearts Drawn in the Sand"), or stays stuck in his mind even after she dumped him ("Only a Girl").

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Don’t let the title fool you. This pleasant set of smooth honky tonk finds a sweet, somewhat slick path and never wavers as it coasts through eleven slices of radio ready country. Corbin is easy on the eyes and ears, sticking close to what works for his amiable voice and lovelorn songs about girls, relationships and errr, more girls. It’s all fizzy, twangy and puppy dog froth with earworm choruses you’ll sing after the first listen.

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On his popular and generally acclaimed debut LP, Easton Corbin’s winning qualities were a voice that sounds a remarkable lot like George Strait’s, some cleverly written songs (like the initial hit, “A Little More Country Than That”) and a demeanor of confident ease. On his second LP All Over the Road, he still has the first, but has mostly abandoned the second in favor of an amplification of our perception of the third quality. Though the album title seems to indicate eclecticism, the album goes the opposite way, towards a general feeling of comfort and good will not that different from what’s pedaled by a host of other popular young male country singers these days.

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