Review
Sure, he’s family, but just what kind of uncle is Matt Shafer, a.k.a. Uncle Kracker? On Seventy Two & Sunny, he can be the kindly uncle, a pensive coot hanging out on the porch with the dawgs, watching the sun set. But get a few drinks in him and he turns into a brawling, Nascar-loving hillbilly peckerwood who best not be crossed: Uncle Sam on a bad day. The third CD from Kid Rock’s former DJ shows him to be a good soul when he’s aiming for lady-friendly hits, but when he starts bragging and snarling, you wish he was an uncle once removed.
Shafer grew up in Clawson, Michigan, and like many Michigan rockers, he arrived with a Southern pedigree. That’s because back in the ’20s and ’30s, thousands of whites and blacks moved North to work in auto factories. Since then, Michigan folks from Bob Seger to Jack White to Bob Ritchie have had a country accent and a rebel streak in ’em.
Still, Kracker’s Southernisms feel a little rote and undigested. He mixes acoustic guitars and electric boogie, “soulful” vocals (too many cigarettes) and fiddles and cameos from bona fide country stars: On “Last Night Again” he duets with Kenny Chesney (Chesney’s cameo is only fair, since Kracker dropped by to duet with Chesney on his Top 10 country smash “When the Sun Goes Down”).
“A Place at My Table” is watered-down Charlie Daniels stuff, a fiddle-driven hoedown in which Kracker pays tribute to his purported influences: Motown, George Jones and Patsy Cline. Elsewhere, would-be loner lyrics fall flat (“Don’t go trying to change me, baby, ’cause you can’t save me,” he says on “Blues Man”), while the double-negative crazed “Don’t Know How (Not to Love You)” isn’t not one of the worst things here.
What Kracker really does best is craft smart, shallow summer songs — catchy fare for the beach à la Sugar Ray. “Rescue,” the first single, should be another hit like his 2001 single “Follow Me” and his cover of “Drift Away”: It’s written by bonded hitmaker Diane Warren and sounds like a bazillion bucks. Cue the sing-along chorus, and get ready to say “uncle.”
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Shafer grew up in Clawson, Michigan, and like many Michigan rockers, he arrived with a Southern pedigree. That’s because back in the ’20s and ’30s, thousands of whites and blacks moved North to work in auto factories. Since then, Michigan folks from Bob Seger to Jack White to Bob Ritchie have had a country accent and a rebel streak in ’em.
Still, Kracker’s Southernisms feel a little rote and undigested. He mixes acoustic guitars and electric boogie, “soulful” vocals (too many cigarettes) and fiddles and cameos from bona fide country stars: On “Last Night Again” he duets with Kenny Chesney (Chesney’s cameo is only fair, since Kracker dropped by to duet with Chesney on his Top 10 country smash “When the Sun Goes Down”).
“A Place at My Table” is watered-down Charlie Daniels stuff, a fiddle-driven hoedown in which Kracker pays tribute to his purported influences: Motown, George Jones and Patsy Cline. Elsewhere, would-be loner lyrics fall flat (“Don’t go trying to change me, baby, ’cause you can’t save me,” he says on “Blues Man”), while the double-negative crazed “Don’t Know How (Not to Love You)” isn’t not one of the worst things here.
What Kracker really does best is craft smart, shallow summer songs — catchy fare for the beach à la Sugar Ray. “Rescue,” the first single, should be another hit like his 2001 single “Follow Me” and his cover of “Drift Away”: It’s written by bonded hitmaker Diane Warren and sounds like a bazillion bucks. Cue the sing-along chorus, and get ready to say “uncle.”
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