Blake Shelton  (Audio CD) 
by Blake Shelton

Oklahoma-born country newcomer Blake Shelton recently made a big splash with "Austin," his first hit single, a cleverly rendered love ballad built as much on lyric contrivance as inspiration. But Shelton's self-titled debut CD, produced by the great veteran country songwriter Bobby Braddock, also contains quite a few harder-hitting, meatier tunes. "Old Red," for instance, is a twangy and resolutely down-home prison tale that Shelton imbues with growling tongue-in-cheek humor. "Same Old Song" is a subtle but soulful Braddock-penned putdown of the current state of country music, to which Shelton brings all the passion and conviction the song deserves. On the socially conscious "Problems at Home" (which Blake cowrote with Billy Montana and Don Ellis), the young singer laments far weightier issues, like school shootings and the destruction of the Amazon rain forests, with similar fervency. On these songs and others, the twenty-something neo-honk-tonker shows just the kind of musical vision and hard-country instincts that are so woefully lacking in the current crop of Nashville hipsters. --Bob Allen