Sugarland Come To Entertain

I wasn't going to buy Sugarland's Love On The Inside. I bought their first album and thought, good, but so what. I streamed their 2nd and thought the same thing. By the release of this 3rd album I'm thinking like I do about a lot of Country singles artists that I can wait for a Greatest Hits release. But Love On The Inside is a surprise. The "Deluxe" edition has 17 songs and the best thing about the album is not Jennifer Nettles' singing which can get a little overbearing, but how the duo never fail to entertain. I hear a truckload of singles here, and they are all better than the first single, which is cute and I've grown to like, but the better songs here stick out more. You got good ballads on the order of their breakthrough "Stay", Pop-Rock stuff left over from the mid-80's and twangy Country. It'll be the most fun you'll hear all year on any album, Country or Pop/Rock. The latter is a crucial point here. Sugarland may come from the Country but they're not really Country. Nettles' Georgia twang gets her on the County charts, but like a lot of today's Country artists, they grew up with the CHR format of Top 40 radio. That's why the songs on the album could come from that era. It's just that their songs are much better than the other Country acts that are mining the same territory.