Search - Mike Ireland & Holler :: Try Again

Mike Ireland's 1998 debut album, Learning How to Live, was an out-of-nowhere stunner, a gut-churning emotional blowout crafted in the aftermath of epic personal turmoil. Like that disc, its follow-up is classic country, the kind that echoed from AM radio 30 years ago. And it's no mere revival act: from the lush, wistful opener "Welcome Back" through the swinging "Sweet Sweetheart," the pensive piano ballad "I'd Like To," and the doomed-love ode "Close Enough to Break Each Other's Hearts," all the way down to the last dying notes of the plaintive closer "Let Me Hold You," not one second sounds forced. Ireland's tenor is versatile and sweetened with a twist of Ozark twang; his lyrics are less crushing than inspiring this time, but just as unflinching and true. And his band Holler handles weepers and rockers with equal aplomb, always seeming to know whether to lay back or leap forward and never failing to color with just the right lick, fill, or string section swoon. Though it took Ireland four years to muster the players, songs, money, and courage to make his second disc, Try Again is a wire-to-wire winner and well worth the wait. --Anders Smith Lindall