Shock 'N Y'all

A former oil field worker, Toby Keith has always known how to capture the passions of blue-collar men and women, desperate to blow off steam at the end of the day. As such, he’s stocked his latest album with themes designed to push all the right emotional buttons--patriotism, Jesus, buddy love, fast women, and reality altering substances. "I Love This Bar," the first single, offers a kinder, gentler Keith than the boot-shoving redneck of "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)." But as he segues to "American Soldier," a song so gung-ho and puffed up that it could be a musical recruitment poster, you know he’s gearing up for a scud missile of a payoff. Sure enough. By the time he gets to "The Taliban Song," a comedic and cartoonish skewering of The Enemy, recorded in concert, it’s hard to remember that he once wrote well-crafted ballads of romantic infatuation. Now it’s all grandstanding, baby, even the best-written song, a jazzy, talking blues which fillets his critics. If he’s not exactly "Shock’n Y’All" as the title suggests, he’s certainly putting his "Baddest Boots" forward.