Customer Reviews

Balls

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Balls" is Cook's finest record to date. Following the excellent "This Side Of The Moon" with a collection of up-tempo shuffles, wry observances and heartfelt ballads, "Balls" delivers on all fronts. No need for EC to skim the surface of her rural upbringing by talking about "muddin'" and "hick towns" and all of the transparent Music Row nonsense that passes for Country music these days. Cook is the genuine article, and her songs ring simple and true.

"Rest Your Weary Mind" is a meditation on helping her man decompress after a hard day of Life. Sung as a duet with Bobby Bare, Jr., Cook's refrains provide soothing balm to Bare's laments. Conway and Loretta never did it any better.

"Down Girl" is a snaphot of a melancholy friend's marital woes, and the stark production and quiet mood give it a lullaby feel. Beautiful.

"Gonna Be" and "Times Are Tough In Rock and Roll" are clever, light-hearted romps through the pleasures and pains of being on "the ladder", but only a rung or two up, detailing life on the road and at home for an indie artist.

"Momma's Prayers" reveals a sentiment Hallmark only wishes they could put into words.

Backed by roots rock guitar ace (and husband) Tim Carroll and the cream of Nashville's roots session players including guitar masters Kenny Vaughan and Richard Bennett, Cook's vocals are sure and plaintive, sassy and seductive. Producer Rodney Crowel kept a light touch on the proceedings, allowing the songs and the players to meet at the point of "just enough" - nothing here sounds like a demo or a New Country polished cliche.

This kind of real music is out there, despite the major labels best efforts to ignore it (see "Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?"). If you are just getting hip to EC, check out all of her albums. Now that Rolling Stone, CBS Sunday Morning, AT&T Blue Room, and Dwight Yoakam are on board, it might be too late to say "I knew her when...", but Cook is that rare new friend that sounds like an old friend. Make yourself at home, put this record on.

What an unbelievable follow up to her last album, "This Side of the Moon".
I, for one, thought it would be very difficult for this super-talented singer/songwriter to ever top it; not because I doubted her ability or creativity.........just because that record was so damn good. I couldn't have been more wrong. "Balls" is like Godfather II or Spiderman II: much better than the original.

Give some credit to producer Rodney Crowell, but give Elizabeth tons of credit for her amazing lyrics and heartfelt vocals. This is a kind of country music that's hard to categorize, but it's the kind the very best of the genre are noted for: the likes of Alan Jackson, Dolly Parton and Dwight Yoakam. The common denominator is that they write their own stuff, and sing it with a kind of passion and intensity most popular singers never bring to their music.

The title cut may get all the attention, and it's a helluva song. But, it's no better than 8th best on this album. Every listener will have personal favorites, but this will be a record most will want to play all the way through every time. It's fitting that the final track is a cover of Tim Carroll's superb "Always Tomorrow". Guess we've been put on notice that more and better stuff is on the way. I won't be a doubter this time.

Only one complaint. Too bad the album didn't include a 12th track. The obvious oversight was a duet with Rodney Crowell of "Love Hurts". If you ever have the chance to hear them perform it live, you'll know what I mean. Buy this record, and if you don't already own "This Side of the Moon", pick that one up as well. If you're disappointed in the least, give them to someone with taste who can appreciate good country music.

I was alerted to Elizabeth Cook by radio presenter Bob Harris here in UK.
Elizabeth cook sings traditional (real) country music, appreciates genuine musicianship, has a fine voice (and is also stunning to look at). If you are sick of pop-country artists who ditch the genre the moment they get some success (Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift) - rest assured Elizabeth Cook is the real thing. She regularly plays the Grand Ole Opry and will have much success amongst real country fans. The track Mama's Prayers and a cover of Sunday Morning are just 2 highlights of the CD.

So Elizabeth Cook poses the important country musical question of the times, if a Nashville woman possessed testicular rectitude, what would that look like, what would that sound like, what wouldn't this testosterone'd woman say? Well it seems on her Nashville breakout album, "Balls," Lizzie gal will say a plenty. It's not shocking that a record like this gets made these days but what is surprising is that it comes out of a Nashville studio co-written by a Nashville Country chops writer, Rodney Crowell. I can see this coming out of Chicago's own Bloodshot Records but Nashville?

So if the sounds here had a male counterpart it would most likely be Robbie Fulks Revenge! or Bobby Bare Jr. From the End of Your Leash. As far as country women singers go I'd say Elizabeth Cook was a smash-up of Gretchen Wilson One of the Boys, Sugarland Enjoy the Ride, little bit o' Shania The First Time... For the Last Time, and a whole lotta Loretta Lynn Van Lear Rose thrown in to boot. What's that a-boot you may ask if you are from Canada like Twain? Well let me tell ya country music listener out there on the front porches of America, it's a-boot good music pure and simple.

So on to the music and on to Elizabeth Cook's "Balls." The title track kicks it all off in fine fashion with aforementioned "Balls." Get a load of this as Cook name checks that venerable San Fran Rock-N-Roll publishing institution, "reason is to feel this way / Rollin' Stone has seen its day / all my feelings / all my fears / were confirmed with Britney Spears." Well is this Nashville country firing a bow shot to Rock N Roll's selling out? I'm with you on all the Britney Spears covers but you gotta admit, she's interesting and did appeal to their readership, though granted had nothing to do with Rock N Roll. Odd, like all sorts o' shades of black kettles? Odd, but interesting, I say.

Next Cook and Co. get serious on the hauntingly beautiful country blues ballad, "She's a Down Girl." "There's nothing to it, things turn on a dime, she can't feel a thing at this particular time, she's never liked waves they remind her of all the temptations she's craved, she's a down girl," Very nice lyrical writing by the way here to a gin-steeped number about a girl who has lost her way, her verve, her panache, her mojo.

So as far as alt country goes, you can't go wrong with Balls. While your at getting back to your traditional Country roots, for a perfect compliment, pick up Loretta Lynn and Jack White's "Van Lear Rose," to get your complete fix. Growing up I owned the iconic 33 and a third copy of Tanya Tucker's Delta Dawn. For some reason Elizabeth Cook and her Nashville-sized balls reminds me of that wax. So wax on fans and get a listen of cook, a cook no more barefoot and pregnant whistling in the kitchen. Instead a country twang warbling songbird yelping from the tops of the Ozarks to the Smokey's. --mmw

Hey Y'all struck me as a surprise back in 2002, because it was one of the few country albums made by a big record company that I actually liked. (Nashville biggies usually finance dull pop albums that they sell as country after a sprinkling of mandolin and fiddle here and there). My astonishment didn't last long, though, since Hey Y'all was the first - and last - of Cook's album with Warner, before she was discarded by the recording behemoth and went to increase the number of indie artists.

Balls is her second indie album and overall her best to date. It is composed of 11 tracks (9 original songs, a Velvet Underground cover and a track by her husband Tim Carroll) for a total length of 33 minutes.

In spite of the indie label, the list of people who worked on this album is quite impressive: Rodney Crowell, Tim Carroll, Kenny Vaughn, Nancy Griffith and Bobby Bare Jr. The final result, however, is unmistakably 'indie', that is unaffected, unpolished and true.

Tracks are mostly in the old country vein and they remind me of Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. The first song is Times Are Tough In Rock 'n Roll, which is an amused - and Jew's harp driven - charge against today's music industry ("All my feelings, all my fears were confirmed with Britney Spears").

Sometimes It Takes Balls To Be A Woman gives the album its title; it's a song about women who must be tough in order to claim their space in society and show who they really are. Despite the serious topic, the tone is lively and far from somber.

Rest Your Weary Mind is an elegiac duet with Bobby Bare Jr.; it sounds as it was recorded 100 years ago in Appalachia. Here Elizabeth Cook reminds me of the 'old-time music revivalist' Grey Delisle.

The album gets its energy back in the next track, He Got No Heart, a rockabilly number worthy of Wanda Jackson. The tone gets wistful again with Mama's Prayers, which reminds me of Iris DeMent's Mama's Opry, both for its subject and melody.

Sunday Morning is the famous Velvet Underground song, here delivered in a convincing country arrangement. What Do I Do is a brisk honky-tonk song (the album alternates effortlessly between slow and uptempo numbers) followed by the melancholic Down Girl, which talks about the resilience of a woman hit by the adversities of life.

Somehow, the theme of life's hardship comes back in the final tracks; she proudly fights back in Gonna Be, a lively honky tonk ("I'm not an has been, I'm still a going to be, you just wait and see, you just won't believe") and she longs for a better future in the gentle ballad Always Tomorrow, penned by Tim Carroll.

Sometimes it takes balls to be a woman, as she would say, but Elizabeth Cook has finally found the place she deserves in the country music universe.

This is what country should sound like. Miss Cook has 3 cds now and every one is great. Why haven't I heard her on country music stations? She is far better than the majority of country "stars" today.

I am a country music LOVER! I love everyone from Loretta to Gretchen but I have a new LOVE with Elizabeth Cook. This album is getting country back to its roots in the likes of Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette. If you love country music you will not be sorry with the BALLS album. GET SOME BALLS!!!

This album has all the elements of "good country music" that music row has abandoned. meaningful songs, a rebel attitude, amazing musicians, and a true, intelligent, beautiful, powerful southern belle fronting it all.

I wish more country singers were willing to go "balls out" like Elizabeth.

Okay, so I found Elizabeth Cook later than many others, but the CD has "legs" to use a non-sexist term, so it shouldn't matter. I discovered her while talking with a booking agent at an Arts Presenters music conference and, with the photo on the cover and the title on the cover, I just had to know more.

She's not a household name yet and probably not getting a lot of play on "New" or "Top 40" Country Radio. She's a bit too gutsy for them, yet - despite Rodney Crowell as Producer (and Crowell vocalizing on one track, with Nanci Griffith there too), she's not quite Americana. But she does have a great voice and does write some interesting lyrics too!

The last track "Always Tomorrow" stretches out to over five minutes, which allows the accompanying musicians to show their stuff too.

Its over 2 years since this CD's release. Its about time for a follow-up!

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

Where do you begin to review something that is so perfect and flawless!Because that's exactly what this album is.
Elizabeth is often compared to Loretta Lynn and this album will show you why.
With the title track Sometimes It Takes Balls To Be A Woman,this has Loretta written all over it.With it's feisty,tongue-in-cheek lyrics and traditional sound you will easily fall in love with this one.Other great uptempos are Times Are Tough In Rock 'N Roll(this has a great bluegrass style to it),He Got No Heart and What Do I Do.All cracking songs.
But the real gems are her ballads.Such as the endearing Mama's Prayers,Down Girl which features Nancy Griffith on harmonies and the simply beautiful Rest Your Weary Mind.This features Bobby Bare jr and has such a gorgeous fiddle arrangement which reminds me a little of some Patty Loveless songs,plus Elizabeth's voice is so beautiful on this.Other lovely ballads are the easy listening,laid back Sunday Morning and Always Tomorrow.
Produced by the great Rodney Crowell and 9 of the 11 tracks written by Elizabeth this album is simply stunning.If you like your country music proper Country,then this album is an essential!You will not be disappointed.I can't recommend it enough....