Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing (CD - 2006)

Personnel: Keith Urban (vocals, guitar, E-bow, bouzouki, mandolin, piano, bass guitar, percussion); Ronnie Dunn (vocals); Tom Bukovac (guitar); Rami Jaffee (keyboards); Jimmie Lee Sloas (bass guitar); Chris McHugh (drums, programming).

The fair-haired Aussie who came across the pond with guitar in hand to show Nashville how it's done, Keith Urban became a country music phenomenon in the early 2000s. Like his contemporary Brad Paisley, Urban combined songs with a broad-based appeal and fiery fretboard skills to gain a wide audience. LOVE, PAIN & THE WHOLE CRAZY THING finds Urban refining his approach ever further, to achieve the perfect marriage of pop, rock, and country.

Electronic-sounding beats, soaring string arrangements, and searing lead guitar mesh seamlessly with banjo, steel guitar, and mandolin throughout the album. The amalgamation of '70s/'80s widescreen pop-rock a la Elton John and Bryan Adams with contemporary country sounds surprisingly natural here. From the airborne "Shine" to the down-and-dirty "Raise the Barn" (with a guest turn from Brooks & Dunn's Ronnie Dunn), Urban never falters. Whether the reason lies chiefly in his guy-next-door persona, hook-heavy songcraft, or instrumental deftness, LOVE, PAIN has platinum written all over it.

Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing was released on November 7, 2006, just after country singer and songwriter Keith Urban entered -- of his own accord -- into treatment for alcoholism. With Urban having married actress Nicole Kidman just months before, the timing couldn't be better. After all, Urban is trying to get well at the very peak of his life -- thus far -- personally and professionally. Be Here, his last album, is, at the time of this writing, at nearly the four-million mark in sales. As fine as that disc is, this one is another giant leap for Urban as an artist. Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing is slicker than anything Urban has issued before, but that's because it's more ambitious as well. Urban is a rocking guitarist, a complete wildman on the electric six-string, and he can combine his tough, unhinged approach to playing guitar with pop songwriting and utterly brilliant production elements that layer strings, drum loops, fiddles, banjos, E-Bows, and Hammond B-3s. Add a songwriting style that touches on the classic elements of rock, country, and mainstream pop, and you have something that hasn't been heard in the country genre in this way before. That's right -- the album is further proof of his ability to stretch the genre to the breaking point by bringing in more of modern pop's elements while remaining firmly within it.

This albums feels, song by song, as if there isn't anything he can't do. Co-producing with Dan Huff, Urban wrote or co-wrote ten of the album's 13 cuts -- there's a hidden track buried in the CD-ROM portion of the disc. The production is thoroughly modern, but feels like the country equivalent of George Martin. It's positively baroque in places, and there is so much packed in that it almost feels claustrophobic, but he makes it work beautifully. No record since Neil Diamond's brilliant Beautiful Noise -- produced by the Band's Robbie Robertson -- has sounded so regal and inviting. The album's first single, "Once in a Lifetime," opens the set; it entered the Billboard chart at number 17, the highest debuting single since the chart's inception. But the shock is simply that it's not the best track on the record. Urban has packed this disc with fine writing and excellent, even defining versions of the songs he chose to cover. There are a number of rockers, including "Faster Car," with its smoking, funky bassline and layered power chords on guitars and his "ganjo" that ring above the horn section, and "I Told You So," which uses acoustic guitars, fiddles, and the ganjo to usher in some twisting, minor-key electrics. Both songs are based on tight little hooks; both songs build to the breaking point and allow Urban's voice to soar above the instruments. On the latter tune, Uilleann pipes and bouzouki are layered into the mix in a melody that brings to bear Celtic cowboy lyric frames and tribal rhythms that just explode near the end when Urban cuts loose in a serious, distortion-laden guitar wrangle.

"Shine," which begins as a shimmering country-pop tune, is a another example, as a string section and his unhinged soloing style battle for dominance in the nearly unbearable climax. "I Can't Stop Loving You," written by Billy Nichols, is another big climax tune, but it becomes one of the great modern country love songs with its incessant reaching to its crescendo -- provided by an army of strings and big power chords. "Used to the Pain," written with Darrell Brown, is a stealthy rocking love song that drips with emotion brought out by vocals that swirl all around the instrumental mix and huge drums. The down-home anthem "Raise the Barn," a duet with Ronnie Dunn, was written in reaction to the destruction done by Hurricane Katrina. Urban can write a shuffling country-rocker with the best of them. Urban didn't pen "God Made Woman," but his version makes the track his own. Beginning with a choir (somewhat smaller and yet reminiscent of the Rolling Stones on "You Can't Always Get What You Want"), the cut quickly becomes a loud and proud country-rock anthem that celebrates -- not objectifies -- women. "Tu Compañía" is a way funky country two-step love song driven by the ganjo. Yeah. Funky. The album's final cut, "Got It Right This Time," sounds like a homemade demo by the rest of the album's standards, with Urban handling drum machine and keyboard chores while singing. That said, it's far from substandard and certainly belongs here, as it showcases Urban's voice in all its unadorned grandeur and reveals the influence of soul music on his singing.

Those who wish to decry Urban as some kind of slick, formulaic songwriter and flavor of the country music moment are missing it. The man writes honest, beautifully crafted songs that are adult enough to ponder, tough enough to rock, and tender enough to pull -- not tug -- on the heartstrings. As previously stated, there's no better time to get well than when you are at the absolute top of your game. While Urban's previous records have had their moments and Be Here was his true arrival, Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing is his mature pop masterpiece -- and for all its wonder and expertise, it feels like it's just a taste of what he will offer in the future. ~ Thom Jurek minimize