Artist: Lady Antebellum

Album: Own the Night

Record Label: Capitol Nashville

Soundwaves: 2.5/5

Sounds Like: Fleetwood Mac without Stevie Nix’s talent.

Last time we heard from Lady Antebellum, it was a quarter after one. They were a little drunk and soaring on the wings of smash-hit single ‘Need You Now,’ a country-twanged opus of heartbreak and melancholy. If ‘Need You Now’ was the product of nights of drunken reverie and thoughtfulness, follow-up album ‘Own the Night’ represents the morning-after hangover.

While ‘Need You Now’ is a carefully weaved record that bleeds with sadness and wears its heart on its sleeve, ‘Own the Night’ lacks any emotional punch. Opener ‘We Owned the Night’ is lazily written, with verses and a chorus that run together without a powerful hook to draw in listeners. Singer Charles Kelley half-heartedly tries to energize the track with a few incoherent shouts.

The record’s first single, ‘Just a Kiss,’ shamelessly borrows from the melody of ‘Need You Now’ to the point of Kelley and Hillary Scott trading faux-depressed lines in the verses.The chorus struggles to stand on its own two feet, as the swelling steel guitar and piano chords swallow the two vocalists’ plaintive delivery.

The band gives up on faking sadness with ‘Friday Night,’ a feel-good song that’s more filler than killer. Dave Heywood’s guitar work on the track sounds like something Pat Benatar would write if she played country music — out of character for the trio. It doesn’t help that the lyrics on the ditty scrape the bottom of the barrel of Lady Antebellum’s songwriting talents, with the most cringe-worthy lowlight being the gleefully shouted, ‘I wanna be your lemonade in the shade / Money in your pocket ‘cause you just got paid.’

That’s not to say that Lady Antebellum has completely dropped its sad-sack shtick just yet. ‘Cold as Stone’ is a delightfully depressing song. Featuring some fantastic harmonies, it showcases just how good the vocal dynamic between Kelley and Scott can be. Over a weepy acoustic guitar, Lady Antebellum return to form in a less-is-more kind of way. The vibe carries over into piano ballad ‘As You Turn Away,’ an ode to hard farewells and a vocal tour de force for Scott.

Country music is meant to be sad. And when Lady Antebellum remembers that, they’re almost unparalleled in writing last-call bar blues songs. The album really stumbles when the band gets a little too optimistic. ‘Love I’ve Found in You’ features a quickly paced drumbeat and cheerful steel guitar melodies, but the mid-tempo vocal duo has a hard time keeping up with the beat.

On the other end, ‘Somewhere Love Remains’ might go down as one of the best tracks in Lady Antebellum’s discography. It’s soft, slow and sad. But the soaring chorus offers a ray of optimism that perseveres throughout the song, no matter how depressing the lyrical turns take. Between traded verses from Scott and Kelley and sweeping country orchestration from Heywood, the trio strikes the right balance between despair and hope.

The sleepy ‘Heart of the World’ is the perfect closer, a song with such tired vocals that it’s not hard to imagine the band yawning and falling asleep during the first few studio takes. Even with an understated drumbeat and softly played strings haunting the background instrumentation, the song still sounds tired and worn out.

Right now, this is where Lady Antebellum stands: cranking out tired retreads of old songs, balanced out by jaunty upbeat tunes that sound out of place and a few diamonds in the rough that won’t get much radio airplay. ‘Own the Night’ won’t match the success of ‘Need You Now.’ But maybe this will teach Lady Antebellum a lesson: Sometimes, maybe it’s better to be too sad than too happy.

ervanrhe@syr.edu

Published on September 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Erik: ervanrhe@syr.edu | @therealvandyman