CD Reviews

Alan Jackson

Good Time | Arista

By WRNER TRIESCHMANN | March 25, 2008

2.5 Stars

“But I still like bologna on white bread now and then” is the rallying cry on Good Time, an album that plants its flag in country verities like pedal steel, fiddles, and songwriting that revels in domestic details. “I Still Like Bologna” finds Alan Jackson celebrating those old-fashioned pleasures while admitting to a love for his HD plasma TV. Good Time is old-school in the sense that he’s bypassed Nashville’s army of songwriters to pen all 17 songs himself, and modern in the sense that at least half of the 17 slide by your ears without making much of an impression. Among the exceptions: the fast-paced title track, the warm single “Small Town Southern Man,” and “Nothing Left To Do,” a song in which, it seems, Jackson and his wife try to figure out what to do “after we’ve done it.” At the end of this last one, he calls out for the remote, showing how much he really loves that big screen.