The Last of the True Believers

Uh Oh. Country. Alright, lets see if I find something to enjoy here. Yes. Quite a lot. Aside from the steel guitar, most of the instrumentation is very nice, the fiddle gets a little whiney in places, but the layered melodic harmonies are quite lovely. Both Last of the True Believers and Love at the Five and Dime I would listen to again, St. Olaf's gate was terrible. Just stereotypical country. Then so was most of the rest. I liked One of These Days. Would have been a 4 or 5 star album without steel guitar. Instead it's 3.

I don't like country, and I'll never listen to this again, but it was easy enough to have on in the background.

Spotify reactivated autoplay without permission, and it took me a solid hour to notice the album was done with.

If I had one genre that I actually can't find much to like about it, it would be pop country, and this album is just that. It isn't as egregious as what you may hear on half of the radio stations available while you're driving in the middle of nowhere, but it still really isn't good for me. Country is built a lot on the stories the lyrics tell, but none of these songs feel any more interesting than what you could hear on something in any other song, and the instruments, while I suppose "soothing" are repetitive. That country twang can only be added to so many songs before I start to become numb to it, and then it goes from being annoying to boring, both things you don't want your music to be. Could I see why people may like this? Perhaps, and it's year of release was around the time when country music was starting to transition from more of a blues and folk focus to something more like what it is today, so this is probably for that "revolution" in music, but I just don't enjoy it. If you don't like country music, this does nothing to win you over, but it's certainly not the worst album I've gotten, and the last two songs on the album show some hint of something that could be good. Too little too late, however.

A smooth county folk vibe that has echos of future acts like The Chicks. The stories are sweet, and the harmonies are warm.

Right at the intersection of folk and country, which is a very nice place to be. The band are very tight, the vocals are flawless, the lyrics talk of an America that doesn't exist anymore (if it ever did).
Wonderful

It's a very country & western sound with some folky influences. With the flutes, violin, slide guitar, banjo it has quite a slick Americana sound.
The songwriting certainly isn't bad, but this really isn't for me. It's foundation is too much of the twangy country sound.