RAY SCOTT > Crazy Like Me

Ray Scott’s 2005 entry My Kind Of Music quickly established the husky baritone as one of the primary torchbearers of modern “outlaw country” music, but the rebellious spirit that burned bright on that stellar debut has faded to little more than a flicker on his disappointingly tame sophomore effort.Label: Jethropolitan
[Rating: 2 STARS]

Ray Scott’s 2005 entry My Kind Of Music quickly established the husky baritone as one of the primary torchbearers of modern “outlaw country” music, but the rebellious spirit that burned bright on that stellar debut has faded to little more than a flicker on his disappointingly tame sophomore effort. Far from following in the footsteps of country’s greatest bad-asses, Crazy Like Me reads more like a rejection of hard living than a celebration of it, as Scott spends much of the album-including the cautionary title track-regretfully musing over the negative effects of his own behavior. When Scott does get to carousing, it’s not exactly the stuff outlaw legends are made of-he “plum shot up this town” in “Hell Got Raised Again Tonight,” a paint-by-numbers honky-tonker that is pure cliché, and which, like so much of Scott’s songwriting, embraces the mainstream conformity that his idol Waylon Jennings repudiated.