Jasper County
By:Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
It’s Trisha Yearwood took an unprecedented four years between her eighth album,
2001's Inside Out, and its 2005 follow-up, Jasper County. There was a variety of
reasons for the extended hiatus -- it was one part creative, one part personal,
as Yearwood weathered the storm of going public with her relationship with Garth
Brooks (as of the release of Jasper County, the couple was engaged to be
married) -- but the long wait proved worthwhile since Jasper County is one of
her very best records, an album that stretches further musically than most of
her albums while being more cohesive than most of her records as well. Reuniting
with longtime producer Garth Fundis, with whom she's done most of her best work
(he did not helm Inside Out), Yearwood's picked a set of 11 songs that aren't
just uniformly strong, but are quite diverse. While there's a strong bluesy
undercurrent here, highlighted by the slow-churning opener "Who Invented the
Wheel" and the Bobbie Gentry-styled Southern country-soul of "Sweet Love," this
is firmly a country album, with few concessions to pop crossover. The tracks
that do have a lush, slick surface do tend to be the big ballads, such as
"Standing out in a Crowd," but those do tend to be grounded with acoustic
guitars and Yearwood's impassioned delivery. Plus, even those sweeping slow
tunes are offset by such excellent ballads as the heartbroken "Trying to Love
You" and the epic "Georgia Rain," which are pure country and lend the overall
album a sweet, reflective quality. Even if the album does tend toward relaxed,
meditative tunes, Jasper County works because instead of maintaining that
introspective vibe throughout the album, Yearwood and Fundis bring in not just
those bluesy, soulful songs for balance, but they find two rip-roaring Al
Anderson songs -- the white-hot "Pistol" and the old-fashioned honky tonk anthem
"It's Alright" -- to give this more country grit than has been heard on any
Yearwood album in a long time. At a mere 38 minutes, the album moves along
briskly, not just because of the short running time, but because the album is
paced well, moving gracefully between ballads, blues like "River of You," and
rollicking up-tempo tunes. The end result is an album that's not just one of
Yearwood's most entertaining albums, but one of her richest records, in both
musical and emotional terms as well. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide