Steven Tyler - We're All Somebody From Somewhere (Album Review)
Wednesday, 20 July 2016
Written by Simon Ramsay
Country carpetbagger. It’s a pejorative phrase used to slight musicians who relocate to Nashville, hell-bent on exploiting country music’s commercial pulling power. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler is the latest artist to walk that way, but while the singer’s rock fans may have dreaded the prospect his debut solo release would have been much better if he’d actually made a flat out country album, rather than this unfocused, messy effort.
When the legendary frontman proclaimed ‘country music is the new rock ‘n’ roll’ it wasn’t surprising. After all, he’s sat as a judge on American Idol and isn’t shy about promoting ‘Brand Tyler’. Hooking up with noted producers T Bone Burnett and Dann Huff, as well as the Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston, regular collaborator Marti Frederiksen and some of Music Row’s finest songwriters, ‘We’re All Somebody…’ is a stab at cracking the thriving Nashville scene that rings a little cynical. Aside from Tyler’s declarations, this isn’t much of a country record at all.
Lap steel, dobro and banjo all loiter in the background, but like many young pop-country acts - see Florida Georgia Line - it’s all very commercial, polished and lacking genuine grit. Red, White & You is a radio anthem with a superb hook, but hearing a writer of his calibre and maturity hollering a bro-country tune bereft of personal experience, and steeped in clichés, feels plain wrong.
Tyler's distinctive voice, meanwhile, lacks the requisite southern twang, making the end product, and its glut of decent to ambling acoustic numbers, feel like a watered down Americana version of Aerosmith.
There are signs that it could have been better. My Own Worst Enemy, a folky accordion-flavoured cousin to Dream On, and the heartfelt nostalgia of Gypsy Girl, recall the reflective confessional style of Don Henley’s wonderful ‘Cass County’. Focusing on this approach would have yielded impressive results, so it’s disappointing to find that Love Is Your Name, Sweet Louisiana and Make My Own Sunshine, although catchy, lack real substance, especially when his colourful past could have inspired some classic, and intriguing, country storytelling.
The record’s also too long, poorly paced, tonally haphazard and boasts a first half loaded with average songs that should have been discarded. The distorted, semi-industrial Hold On (Won’t Let Go) and sloppy title track, where a mixture of funky rhythms, Delta rawness and R&B horns attempt to mirror the multicultural lyrical bent, both sound like ramshackle demos hurled together at the last minute.
To be fair, Tyler is in fine, committed voice throughout, making many lesser songs better than they have any right to be and dispatching the record’s best cuts with characteristic class. The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and Me is a honky-tonk groover featuring his idiosyncratic tongue-twisting lines, with the playfully subversive What Am I Doin’ Right sporting a whiff of Aerosmith’s What It Takes. Only Heaven is the kind of soaring ballad his band mastered in the '90s.
Ultimately, ‘We’re All Somebody…’ tries be too many things to too many people, seemingly placing its commercial aspirations ahead of stylistic cohesion and artistic credibility. Tyler possesses a wonderfully effusive mind that works at a million miles a minute, but this record – which has similar flaws to Aerosmith’s Tyler-dominated ‘Music From Another Dimension’ – suggests he needs a firm hand to focus his boundless creative energies in the right direction.
Steven Tyler Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed July 20 2016 - PHOENIX Arizona - Comerica Theatre (USA)
Sat July 23 2016 - DENVER Colorado - Ellie Caulkins Opera House (USA)
Tue July 26 2016 - AUSTIN Texas - Bass Concert Hall (USA)
Fri July 29 2016 - HOUSTON Texas - Revention Music Center (USA)
Mon August 01 2016 - DALLAS Texas - Music Hall At Fair Park (USA)
Sat August 13 2016 - CHICAGO Illinois - Chicago Theatre (USA)
Wed August 17 2016 - NASHVILLE Tennessee - Ryman Auditorium (USA)
Sat August 20 2016 - DES MOINES Iowa - Iowa State Fair (USA)
Tue August 23 2016 - WASHINGTON District of Columbia - Warner Theatre - Washington D.C. (USA)
Mon August 29 2016 - CLEARWATER Florida - Ruth Eckerd Hall (USA)
Thu September 01 2016 - ATLANTA Georgia - Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre (USA)
Sun September 04 2016 - BOSTON Massachusetts - Wang Theatre (USA)
Wed September 07 2016 - UPPER DARBY Pennsylvania - Tower Theater Upper Darby (USA)
Sat September 10 2016 - PROVIDENCE Rhode Island - Providence Performing Arts Center (USA)
Tue September 13 2016 - TORONTO Ontario - Sony Centre for the Performing Arts (Canada)
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