PICK OF THE MONTH

MERLE HAGGARD >> IF I COULD ONLY FLY. ANTI INC. 2000

Right now you might be thinking, “Merle Haggard? He’s hardly surf mag material.” Yeah, that sentiment was shared equally when this disc came across my desk. However after my first listen, I was admittedly hooked. This is hardly another Garth Brooks/ Chris Gains disaster. It seems that drawn-out songs about so-called simple livin’ and steroid-injected cattle have really taken over the tone of country music. Blame it on CMT, the music industry, or line dancing (by the way, everything gone wrong in North America should be blamed on line dancing), but country somehow de-evolved to nothing more than plain-old rock music with a negligible twang. That’s what makes If I Could Only Fly so damned good. It’s a throwback to the days when it took more than a broken tour bus VCR to make someone qualify as a suffering musician. The sound is simple, the tone is honest, and the message is more than human.

Merle’s sound stays true to its heritage. The lineup of honky-tonk ballads is rustic in its construction and production. There are no contrived, sing-song hooks, excessive instrumentation, or studio trickery. You get the feeling this is music in its rawest form, and it would sound better played from an old, wooden stage in a smoky barroom than blasting out of stadium speakers. His humble sound sits neatly akin to vocals that live up to Merle’s last name—Haggard. As a full-grown adult man, he reminisces both adoringly and regretfully about his younger, wilder years. “Watching while some old friends do a line/ Holding back the want to end my own addicted mind/ Wishin’ all these old things were new.” Whether his voice is soaring loudly or beaten into the ground, If I Could Only Fly packs more emotion than all the pop ballads in Nashville today. -By Eric Seeger