'Carnival Ride' Review

the-trades.com
by R.J. Carter
Published: January 18, 2008

Release Date: October 23, 2007
Label: Arista
Related Sites: Official Site
Grade: A-

With her sophomore release, "Carnival Ride," country fans continue to fall deeper in love with Carrie Underwood, the sweet little, beautiful, wonderful, perfect All-American Idol winner.

Coming off the success of her debut album, Some Hearts, which featured the #1 hit "Jesus Take the Wheel," Underwood has lost no momentum with her second album. The soul-inspiring "So Small" has already been a #1 single, and "All-American Girl" is well on it's way, peaking this week at #12 and still climbing.

Don't expect those to be the only singles getting airplay out of this album, however, as the disc is packed with playworthy tunes. Carnival Ride opens up with a modern bluegrass fusion melody, "Flat on the Floor," transferring its high-energy to the listener before springboarding into "All-American Girl."

Like any good carnival ride, the album paces itself, alternating thrills and calms. "So Small" appeals to the same faith-filled demographic that made "Jesus Take the Wheel" a chart-topper. However, the album dips from sober to sobbing when "Just a Dream" begins to play. Relying on the setup-and-switch concept at which the country music genre excels, the lyrics open with the MacGuffin of a woman heading to the church, seemingly for her wedding; however, before the opening verse has completed, we're sucker-punched in the gut with the realization that the service is entirely another kind:

And when the church doors opened up wide
She put her veil down trying to hide the tears
Oh, she just couldn't believe it
She heard the trumpets from the military band
And the flowers fell from her hand

Baby, why'd you have to leave me, why'd you have to go?
I was counting on forever, now I'll never know.
I can't even breathe.
It's like I'm looking from a distance, standing in the background
Everybody's saying he's not coming home now.
This can't be happening to me.
This is just a dream.

Expect "Just a Dream" to be a massive seller among supporters of the armed forces, despite the fact that it guarantees watery eyes to whomever listens to the lyrics (an effect that doesn't diminish with, at last count, five separate listenings).

Some of the themes of Carnival Ride are country standards. "Get Out of This Town" is yet another ode to small town restlessness, "Twisted" is one more affirmation of "If Loving You is Wrong," and "Wheel of the World" is just another way of stating what "The Lion King" already did with "The Circle of Life." The album even has a melodically too-beautiful clunker with "I Know You Won't," which, in the old days of 45 rpm records, would have been lucky to make the b-side of the platter.

However, the bulk of the album is so packed with fun that even the clunkers can be forgiven their presence. "Crazy Dreams" can easily be seen as a thank you to both American Idol as well as its fans, opening with the hearty greeting, "Hello you longshots, you dark horse runners; hairbrush singers, dashboard drummers," and culminating with the theme of the chorus, "Thank God even crazy dreams come true."

Two songs, so far unreleased as singles, stand out from the pack as completely unadulterated smile generators. "Last Name" is a bass-thumping, volume-pumping story song about a girl who parties a little bit too hard and finds herself in the morning with a guy -- and she doesn't even know his last name. But her problems are a lot worse than that, as we find out when the song shifts into its final refrains!

In that same humorous vein, "The More Boys I Meet" takes the bumper sticker girl-motto to the next level, as Underwood bemoans that she'll "give anyone a shot once" -- which admittedly had this married reviewer nonetheless wondering where that particular line starts. As the singer continues searching for Mr. Right by following the path of "I close my eyes, and I kiss that frog,", she is continually reinforcing her finding that "the more boys I meet, the more I love my dog."

Credit goes to producer Mark Bright on this album for turning out a product unlike the flash-reliant, overproduced albums of some other American Idol winners and runners-up. Carnival Ride is driven almost entirely on Underwood's vocal skills, as well as her talents as a songwriter (Underwood shares writing credits on both the already released singles, as well as "Crazy Dreams" and "Last Name"). Like its title, the album combines tilt-a-whirl tunes with tunnel-of-love tearjerkers, for an overall roller-coaster effect that has you getting right back in line for more when the ride is over.