Fresh Horses

Loaded with the populist and humanist touches that differentiate his brand of modern country from that of the Nashville boy-crooners riding his coat-tails, FRESH HORSES continues Garth Brooks' streak of exciting, fresh-faced albums. It's not just that the Oklahoma-born singer has created a platform that offers something for every country music connoisseur--the instrumentation and song structures nod toward the traditional, the booming sound hints at southern fried and arena-rock, the lyrical stance is as progressive as Music City gets--but the fact that Brooks clearly reaches out to each of these constituencies, and is quite natural doing it.
Among Garth's contributions to country has been the infusion of that old-time rock and roll spirit to Nashville's age-old conventions. On FRESH HORSES, Brooks once again drinks from that fruitful well with memorable results. "The Old Stuff" is a reminiscence about life on the road "back when the old stuff was new", and gives guitarists Chris Leuzinger and Gordon Kennedy some space to do a Silver Bullet Band-styled battle with Bobby Wood's keyboard; "The Fever" updates an old Aerosmith thrasher for the rodeo set; and "Rollin'", a portrait of a female trucker's life on the road, is a hard-driving piece of honky-tonk with a vocal that's pure Elvis.
That woman behind the wheel brings up another point that separates Brooks and FRESH HORSES from country's other hunk-alikes: the strength of his female characters. The fate-bitten, single mother nurturingly caring for her offspring ("That Ol' Wind"), the wife drifting into the sunset after the sudden demise of her one true love ("The Beaches Of Cheyenne") and the trucker choosing her own path rather than letting her man do it for her ("Rollin'") leap above easy cliches, and embody the respect Brooks approaches the so-called fairer sex with. This makes him not only a talented country star, but one who's easy to admire.|