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MojoOct 27, 2015Henley's discourses on ageing and feeling adrift in the modern world are poignant, and, on A Younger Man, painfully well observed. [Dec 2015, p.93]
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Sep 28, 2015While the contributors are many, Cass County is a Henley vision down to its bones.
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Sep 23, 2015A record that's not only easier to enjoy than most of his solo records, but also stronger song for song than many of the early Eagles albums.
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Sep 23, 2015There is a tendency to scoff at the clichéd “back to his roots” concept of Cass County and you can’t help but wish some of the occasionally slick production was dialed down a notch. Regardless, it yields arguably Henley’s finest solo work and, at its best, music that stands with the Eagles’ finest country influenced moments.
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Sep 23, 2015Cass County is meticulously crafted, sharply written and absolutely free of neo-country additives like reheated Seventies-rock bombast and Twitter-verse vernacular.
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Oct 6, 2015The cover of Tift Merritt’s Bramble Rose is affecting too, a stately country shuffle that finds Henley trading verses with Lambert over pedal steel and mandolin, while Jagger blows harmonica and sings like a cat pleading to be let in from the rain. At other times, the album is less successful, particularly when it falls back on weepy honky-tonk tropes.
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UncutSep 25, 2015One of the missed opportunities of Cass Country is that it isn't especially revelatory about Henley, as a man in late-middle-age taking stock of his life. As a country album, it is perhaps a little too neat, a little too polished. [Nov 2015, p.68]
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Sep 24, 2015The most interesting aspect of this uneven album is Henley’s lyrics: he’s by turns peppery (“Space-age machinery / Stone-age emotions,” sniffs the honky-tonk swingalong No, Thank You) and unsentimental (“Time can be unkind / But I know every wrinkle and earned every line”)--and enjoyably so.
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Sep 23, 2015The number and potency of these guests sometimes make Cass County sound like a tribute album to someone not yet gone. They also take away from Mr. Henley, now 68, whose voice has decayed nicely, though it now lacks the wise punch it had on “The End of the Innocence,” his excellent 1989 album.
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Oct 2, 2015At the album’s best, Henley conjures up the push-pull between restlessness and contentment in a way that jibes well with the musical interest in the traditions of the genre. At its worst, the album makes me want to throw it out the window, either for the cliches or more often the way the persona of the album comes from a lecturing place of “wisdom”; an I’ve-lived, so I know attitude.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 4
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Mixed: 1 out of 4
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Negative: 0 out of 4
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Nov 25, 2017
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Dec 14, 2015