Title - 'Heartland Highway' (Rock Ridge Music)
Artist - Sister Hazel
Kicking off the album with 'Great Escape,' Gainesville, FL's Sister Hazel seem to have transformed into an electronic, folky Americana band! I mean, sure most of their work leans toward a country rock flavor, but this new release sort of puts a glossier shine on things.
'Heartland Highway' follows on the heels of the band's most-recent album, 'Release,' and features all new tracks written and produced by the 5 band members. As with most SH albums, there are a couple of songs that could well end up to be 'classic' SH songs for sure: 'Stay Awhile' and 'Far Away,' just two choices.
Indeed, the first real taste of their country rock flavor comes in midway through on 'Where You're Going,' and is followed by a nice, trippy, '60s-ish 'Complicate.'
Closing the album with a triple play: 'Lessons In Love, Hope, And Faith - Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3' seems a little, well, self-indulgent. I mean, a song is a song, is a song, so why not simply give it it's own title? Anyway, not that they merge together as one, as you'd expect, some feature cheesy lines ("We're just humans running in the human race"), but they are nice songs of Americana flavor, for sure.
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