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It's a Business Doing Pleasure with You bristles with Kroeger's barely veiled, unwitting hostility, something that the big-hearted McGraw doesn't wear well--not in the least, because it sounds like a boneheaded swipe at his jetsetting wife Faith Hill--and it's something he wisely side-steps on the rest of the record, choosing to mine a sentimental, meditative vein, musing on major changes in his life and wondering what will happen after he's gone.
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He mostly hews to his strengths, singing sad, earnest songs and letting the effort show--a superstar who's still a striver.
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Consistency and supreme competence aside, Voice seems to tell every story but his own.
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It turns out to be a solid enough representation of the sort of music McGraw has been making for most of this decade that falls short of the best of what he’s been doing.
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Distractions aside, Mr. McGraw returns again and again to the melancholy of passing time, and it sounds as if, rightly, he might wish to reframe his entire career around songs about crumbling beauty.
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McGraw sees this, his 10th studio effort, as a way of reclaiming his voice, and bucking the powers that be might well be one facet of that voice. If only more of that feistiness were evident in the songs he's selected.
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Southern Voices is done well overall, but listeners may want to keep close a copy of McGraw's upbeat hit 'I Like It, I Love It' to lighten the mood.