Ross Cooper’s new album is a true cry to cowboy country. Many of the songs echo his career as a bareback rider, with the lyrics reflecting the rodeo lifestyle. ‘I Rode The Wild Horses’ combines both folk and alt-rock to create a “new Nashville sound” as Cooper calls it. The title track takes an authentic Texas Western feel on a cowboy song, which tells the tale of a weary cowboy traveller. With lyrics like “I’m a spitfire son of the road” it shows Cooper’s impressive songwriting talent and highlights his experience of being on the road with the rodeo.
‘Cowboys and Indians’ takes quite a sinister turn with the backtrack sounding like it belongs in a Halloween movie but with the powerful electric guitar throughout the piece, it removes the cheesiness of the track to make it play like a Tim Burton inspired John Wayne movie, which sounds like it shouldn’t work but it does.
Overall the album is packed with different sounds and genres, which may be a bit too much for this piece as a whole. Some songs do work well like the already noted tracks which both sound like they belong on the same album, not so much the inclusion of ‘Lady of the Highway’, a mellow piece which is more reflective of a Tim McGraw song than a true cowboy. Overall Cooper wants to show off his range of talent, but the heavier country-rock songs are the highlights of the album.
Summary
Cowboy roots, upbeat country-rock songs and a few mellow songs
