Max McNown – Night Diving
The second album from young Nashville based singer songwriter Max McNown is very much from modern Nashville. I don’t know if this is even a country album but it is certainly wearing country clothes. Many of the songs could fit in on albums by highly successful pop artists, Ed Sheeran for one. It’s the instrumentation rather than the production or the songs themselves that’s traditionally “country”. Americana mainstays; mandolins, fiddles and pedal steel all crop up here as window dressing for the main event which is the songs and the acoustic guitar and vocals that form their foundations. The album almost tiptoes into the room, like it doesn’t want to cause any offence. It’s an album that very much wants you to like it and that’s okay because there’s a lot to like.
We kick off with the sound of a distant steam train. Tell me you’re country without telling me you’re country. It’s easy to be seduced by the title track’s California dream of “night diving in Monterey”. In fact it’s easy to be seduced by the whole album with its open production allowing space for each of the instruments to breathe. It rolls along at a toe tapping pace that will get couples swaying in the kitchen, giving each other a honky tonk twirl.
McNown has a deft lyrical touch too and there are some lines that burrow into the ear in an unshowy fashion. That touch lifts track three, It’s Not Your Fault (which is rare by not being in the first person) “You needed a break but the world hit the gas”. This is a really strong song all round actually, benefitting from a subtle use of some power chords at the climax, if they can be subtle!
Just when the listener could be forgiven for thinking a wee change of pace might be required, Azalea Place comes along at somewhere between a trot and a gallop and with a great chorus to boot, advising us to look at life with “Gratitude and Grace”.
At the heart of so much art, the theme of Love I Couldn’t Mend is explicit and timeless “the one I want, don’t want me”. The way some haunting harmonica and plangent fiddle weave the background here reminds me of Darrell Scott.
Another highlight, Roses and Wolves features a duet with Hailey Whitters who sounds more traditionally countrified than Max who has a voice that’s very modern, far removed from a Willie or a Waylon.
We’re in familiar break up territory with a lovely, life goes on chorus and message.
Folks who equate country with twangy guitars will either feel let down or vindicated by their occasional appearance especially on the final track Freezing In November (Revisited).
So if your taste runs to polished, country flavoured singer songwriter fare, this could be an album for you. Just don’t expect it to have dirt under its fingernails and whiskey on its breath.
Mike Bruce | Now Spinning Magazine
