Wide Open [Digipak] (CD - 2009)

Personnel: Billy Panda (acoustic guitar); Adam Shoenfeld, Kurt Allison (electric guitar); Michael "Mike Dee" Johnson (steel guitar); Tony Harrell (piano, Wurlitzer organ); Mike Rojas (piano); Tully Kennedy (bass guitar); Rich Redmond, Rich Redmond (drums, percussion); Rodney Clawson, Neil Thrasher, Wes Hightower, Liana Manis (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Peter Coleman.

Audio Remasterer: Richard Dodd.

Recording information: Treasure Isle Recording Studio.

Editor: Brandon Epps.

Photographer: Kristin Barlowe.

The third album by Georgia-born, Nashville-based country-rocker Jason Aldean features the hit single "She's Country," a rocking ode to rural gals. Recorded with his road band instead of studio sessionmen, WIDE OPEN has a fresh, live feel that energizes Aldean's songs. Other highlights include the soaring title track, the wide-eyed love song "This I Gotta See," and the heartfelt ballad "Don't Give Up On Me."

Jason Aldean quietly turned into a genuine country star in the back half of the 2000s -- not the kind who has pop hits, but the kind who steadily reaches the country Top Ten, primed for a crossover hit. Wide Open, his third album, might take him there, since he manages to hit every contemporary cliché in the book without seeming too systematic about it. That light touch takes Aldean a long way, as it never appears that he's pandering even though he kind of is, making sure that he has songs about small-town girls with big-city dreams, paeans to Nashville, mournful laments about his rowdy ways, a tune about his big green tractor, and love songs to the country and girls from the country. Aldean puts a lot of rock in his country, particularly on the stuttering AC/DC riff that powers "She's Country," which is a bit of compensation for the plainness of his voice, but his simple, affectless singing does disguise just how shopworn his songs are. He doesn't necessarily turn the familiar into something fresh, but his keen, plainspoken voice does ground Wide Open, making ballads feel intimate and party anthems not too rowdy. It's nothing too risky, nothing too soft, just a straight shot down the middle of the road -- a road that runs through a subdivision that only becomes memorable through repetition. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine minimize