These Days

Vince Gill uses new daring hooks

Since the beginning of the 1980s Vince Gill has been considered one of the most prominent musicians of the country style, demonstrating outstanding skills both in songwriting and performing. His fans always mark his inexhaustible storage of ideas and an ability to create vivid images by means of various stylistic devices in the lyrics. With the release of Vince Gills’ 2003 album Next Big Thing the listeners of the country music have been convinced that their favorite is hardly going to end his career too soon, but this year the singer has recorded a collection of songs that is sure to surprise a lot. Turning to older traditions, when bands like The Beatles could release a multiple album within a year, Vince Gill has gone even further and created a four-disc collection of songs, These Days, with each record pertaining to a particular style. Thus These Days is one of the longest albums of the present days filled with the artist’s infectious emotionality, witty jokes and pure romance. Many of the compositions remind the works of the past that are well known to Gill’s most long time fans, and still the album surprises with an utterly new sounding and daring hooks the musician has never used before.

These Days – one of the most varied and long lasting albums

Album These Days consists of 43 original songs and four discs each of which offers its own stylistic peculiarities. Vince Gill widens his opportunities providing the listeners with the material that ranges from traditional country and bluegrass to jazz and rock. Besides he has also proved to act brilliantly as part of a team, having invited the most worthy artists as they seem to him to join him on a significant part of tracks. The first part of the album, The Rocking Record, opens with Workin’ On A Big Chill, the song that immedeately demonstrates Gill’s outstanding skills of a guitarist and introduces the way he understands real rock. The second part of the album comprises amazing ballads. Here the female vocals serves a great refiement to most of the songs: Leann Rimes appears on very beautiful composition What You Don’t Say, Alison Krauss on The Reason Why (the title song of this disc), Bonnie Raitt on The Rock Of Your Love and Sheryl Crow on What You Give Away. One of the highlights on this record is a jazzy composition Fait Of Heart with Diana Krall, very sappy and emotional. The most country influenced is the third record Some Things Never Get Old, on which such songs as The New Heartache, Out Of My Mind (With Patty Loveless) and Don’t Pretend With Me are the most classy, with playful guitars and sultry feedles. Finally, Little Brother presents the part with acoustic and bluegrass compositions, and Vince Gill has brilliantly done these as well. The Del Mccoury Band joins him on tracks Cold Gray Light Of Gone and Give Me the Highway and Guy Clark features him on the closer Almost Home. Thus These Days is one of the most varied and long lasting albums lately and Vince Gill’s means to get rid of any limitations.

One of the most important musical events

When Vince Gill’s popularity only started to grow, the audience was really impressed by the fact that after being a temporary back-vocalist of a barely known band he had so quickly managed to turn into an independent and quite meaningful figure in the world of rock and country music. His new album, however, clearly outshines all the previous surprises and doubtless deserves to be called one of the most important musical events not only of the year, but rather of the decade as well. Probably some compilations can boast such a number of tracks, but only few of them have ever been close to These Days on the levels of variety and novelty of the material. Keyboardist John Hobbs and sound engineer Justin Niebank have assisted Gill with the production of the album and given it the necessary charm that always goes hand in hand with a good country album. Even if you have no worthy collection of country music, These Days is the one that can luckily fill this space, and taking into account its length it is sure to substitute for more than one suchlike record. Now that this great irreplaceable album has been unleashed one might suppose that Vince Gill is about to take a time-out, but considering his growing enthusiasm we can probably be expecting a new work in a couple of years, we should just prepare some more space for it.