Album Spotlight: Angaleena Presley - Wrangled

With the release of her second solo album Wrangled, Angaleena Presley has nailed it. For me anyway. I've noticed that this record has been fairly polarizing. People either love it or wanted American Middle Class (her first solo album) part two and didn't get it.

Presley has been writing songs for years and gained notoriety as one third of the Pistol Annies along with Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe. That's just for context, the important thing here is that Wrangled is an amazing piece of work.

My purpose here is to spotlight albums that I find great, unique and, most importantly, have only one or fewer skip-worthy songs according to me, not to review a whole slew of albums and give my opinion. I'll get to the great things about Wrangled in a moment, but I first want to focus on the only skip-worthy song on the album for me. It also happens to be the most polarizing song on the album.

"Country" featuring Yelawolf, in and of itself, is a terrible song without context. Even with context, as a song, it still does nothing for me. It's a protest song about the current state of mainstream country (radio in particular) and music row. Maybe the point was to make an unlistenable song, I don't know. If it was, Angaleena and Yelawolf succeeded. It's just a bad mashup of punk and rap done poorly. I listen to music to enjoy music, not for social commentary (although if you can combine the two, I'm not opposed to that).

Good for Presley for getting people talking about this song, I guess. Not my thing.

Now, on to the rest of the albums, which is fantastic. Angaleena spends the rest of the album tackling a myriad of subjects with depth and humor. At times pairing dark subjects with upbeat music, sometimes the reverse. The listener doesn't exactly know what to expect from track to track, other than Presley will keep it real.

You may love it, you may hate it, you may not know exactly what to make of it, but you won't be indifferent. I think, as an artist, that's the best you can expect unless you're universally loved. And we all know, that really doesn't happen.

Here is my favorite track from Wrangled.

Artist Spotlight: Kara Clark

If you like any combination of Saraya, Cinderella, Miranda Lambert, Molly Hatchet, Halestorm, Whiskey Myers, 4 Non Blondes, Lita Ford and Alice Cooper, then I have the artist for you. And if you have to google or youtube any of the artists mentioned, thank me later and you're welcome.

Her name is Kara Clark and she will kick your ass. Musically, that is. And maybe physically. I don't know.

I have known this for a long time, but it's really become apparent while writing this blog: I don't really like a genre of music as much as I like a style of music. It needs to have real instruments played by real people. It needs to be gritty, dirty, swampy; not too slick, not too polished.

There should be more of Kara Clark here. But in the interim, enjoy this from her 2013 self titled album:



You can purchase music, including her new EP at and hear new music at KaraClark.com.

Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, and Genre Bending

If you read this blog at all, you know I don't really deal in negativity. Especially when it comes to my music posts. I like to feature good stuff that I've found. But what happened at the Billboard Music Awards Sunday night bears comment.

I'm talking about the Carrie Underwood/Miranda Lambert 70's Aerosmith/bad anthem mashup. It was, quite frankly, poor execution of a less-than-mediocre song. "Something Bad", it was. Don't believe me? Here's some video proof. Judge for yourself.



Don't get me wrong. I like both Carrie and Miranda. I'm just disappointed that this is what they came up with in collaboration. It's beneath both of them.

But that brings me to a bigger subject. This is a rock song. At least what I grew up knowing as rock. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that. In fact 70's, 80's and 90's style rock and pop has been co-opted by country music. For me that's a good thing. I like that kind of music.

But on the flip side, there seems to be no room for what is considered traditional country. And that's a shame. I was watching the top 20 on GAC or CMT (can't remember which) this past weekend, and there was not one song that even resembled traditional country. Most of the songs would be in heavy rotation on MTV or VH1 a few years ago.

Right now, there's no room for rock in pop, and no room for traditional country in country. I don't know where it goes from here, but some think that there may be a split in country music, which makes sense to me.

Eric Church is taking hard rock Grammy winners Halestorm out on tour with him for a few dates. That pairing makes more sense to me the than Dwight Yoakam, who will be on the whole tour. Since we're talking about Halestorm and Carrie Underwood, a couple of songs they recorded are practically interchangeable.