The rebellious Dixie Chicks make sure, with the unapologetic "Taking The Long Way," that they're Bush-bashing remark won't soon be forgotten.
"I opened my mouth and I heard myself," lead vocalist Natalie Maines sings on the refreshingly sassy lead track, which throws the Chicks into a minority among popular artists: they're not followers. In fact, Maines confesses on "Long Way" to drinking with the Irish, smoking with the hippies and not kissing ass along the way.
On their eighth album, the follow-up to the bluegrassy "Home," The Dixie Chicks strip the fiddlin' and banjo-pickin' and rock out Sheryl Crow-style on their most personal collection to date. On the heavily downloaded but failed radio single "Not Ready To Make Nice," Maines reflects on the "incident" and realizes that "it's too late to make it right, I probably wouldn't if I could."
On "Nice" Maines' voice sublimely glides over a sparse acoustic guitar. When she refers to the hate they endured, the drums kick in and the strings explode as her alto erupts.
Heavy on drums and guitar (John Mayer play a riff on the last track, "I Hope"), the Rick Rubin (Red Hot Chili Peppers) produced album casts the Chicks out of country's realm and into the classic rock territory, rustling several glorious melodies along the way. It's a successful genre swap that, with Maines' robust and suave vocals, is a tour-de-force.
On "Voice Inside My Head," an ambiguously co-penned tune from Linda Perry (an out lesbian who has written songs for Christina Aguilera and Pink), the newly renovated Chicks examine emptiness that alludes to either regret from a lost love or a teenage abortion.
"I want and I need/Somehow to believe/In the choice I made/Am I better off this way?" sings Maines, her passionate vocals stirring a sense of defeat.
The other tracks, all co-written by the group, stem from infertility ("It's So Hard"), Alzheimer's disease ("Silent House") and Lubbock, Texas, Maines' narrow-minded "bible-belt" hometown ("Lubbock or Leave It").
With lyrics like, "I hear they hate me now/Just like they hated you/Maybe when I'm dead and gone/I'm gonna get a statue, too," the Chicks' sashay into the rock realm, but it doesn't compromise their talent or feel forced. Point blank, it feels real.
Dixie Chicks not making nice
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