Not that one, or that one, nor yet that one…
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[3.89]
Alfred Soto: There’s plenty of fools who still believe women can be devils AND angels, and that these devil-angels will enjoy 12-string serenades.
[3]
Brad Shoup: It’s not that “sexy innocence,” as Love and Theft put it here, is off limits per se as subject matter. It’s more that decades of misuse, particularly by country, have rendered it so. Love and Theft give us one of the mushier contradictions in the genre: she sings in church but enjoys whiskey-and-waters, she flirts with the singer but does nothing more. So many have unjoined these characteristics, making them contrasts. I suppose if rock and roll were concerned with how things are, rather than how they’re perceived, it’d be called folk. Still, for poking their (pretty, long-suffering) 12-string at such an abused archetype as the preacher’s kid and finding nothing but themselves, Love and Theft get the gas face.
[1]
Anthony Easton: I keep hearing critics and the general public talk about how much they don’t like country list songs of recent vintage. I thought they were being snobs, and then I realised they meant things like this. I can’t quite work out why it squicks me out, but it seems both lazy and misogynist, which are my two least favourite categories.
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: Assured over and over again that there’s a little bit of devil in her angel eyes, I’m waiting patiently for the moment when the extraordinarily polite music ever acknowledges it. Nope, nothing but angelic harmonies and cotton-swaddled guitars.
[4]
Iain Mew: This is virtually a McFly song, isn’t it? I can imagine “she’s such a little party girl” tacked onto that chorus really easily. Which gets at the problem — it doesn’t sound like a good McFly song.
[3]
Pete Baran: Which one is Love and which one is Theft? Cos if I were looking for a good night out, I think I’d rather hang with Love. Theft has done more than enough in stitching this song together.
[4]
Michaela Drapes: I’m having an imaginary party down at the lake on my boat this weekend. Bring a sixer of artisanal beer, there, cowboy and I’ll throw some Tofu Pups on the grill. And this charmer will be on the playlist — perfectly respectable country music for people who shop at Whole Foods!
[7]
Josh Langhoff: Well yes, it is a well-known ipso facto that if you are hot for the preacher’s daughter, she is atypical among preachers’ daughters, if only in that regard, unless you are a caddish collector of preacher’s daughters, your basement wall decked out with thousands of photographs or some such creepiness. On the other hand, the several specimens I’ve met haven’t had any problem with alcohol or dancing or rocking or sexy gazes, and certainly Luther would agree that a little bit of devil lurks in all angel eyes. So no, horny Love or Theft, your situation isn’t so unusual — it’s not even a situation. Fortunately, as Tom Petty proved with “Learning To Fly”, a guitar sound like this one atones for plenty of banality.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: It’s about time we got country ABBA covers! After an entire album of ABBA metal, we were overdue for another pigeonholed genre. …Wait, no, this is just another genial angel/devil song, both rendered in music as pleasant purgatory. Oh, no, no, no, no.
[4]