Joe Nichols

Hear Joe Nichols sound like a younger, more rootsy version of Alan Jackson. Stripped-down instrumentation, endearing small town wistfulness, and gear-shifting, rambling roadhouse rockers emphasize the "traditional" in Nichols' torch-carrying New Traditional sound.

You have to hand it to jingoists Darryl Worley and Montgomery Gentry--they evince heart or hair. This bland, well-respected tastenik is neocon in neotrad clothing. Coding as cannily as Alice Cooper, he opines: "There's nothing wrong with people singing about stuff they believe in, but to get up and give a political speech and give your political views and forget what we came to the show for, that's ridiculous." As for hits bewailing Christ's disappearance from the classroom, that's just stuff he believes in. And the title tune, about sinners saved by a dream of the rapture, why, Waylon Jennings did it once. How tasteful do you want? (Grade - C+)