Customer Reviews

What I Really Mean

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

 

 

I have been listening to an advance copy of this album for almost two months. I have played it so often that my wife wants me to leave the house. She thinks I have a weird sickness for REK music, which I probably do. That said, I can tell you that this is an amazing CD and probably the best effort of Robert's long career. I think it could be the break out album for the premier singer songwriter from Texas.

Although I liked Farm Fresh Onions, I am really a bigger fan of some of his earlier stuff. Several songs off Bigger Piece of Sky, especially Paint the Town Beige and Crazy Cowboy Dream have always been my favorite REK tunes. I still listen to Picnic often. My favorite songs on it are: Over The Waterfall, Running With The Night and 4th of July.

If you share my love for those early songs, you are really going to like What I Really Mean. The song writing is vintage REK, and the band is excellent. Rich Brotherton may be the most under rated guitar player in the world. The rhythm section is as solid (game) as always on every song. The addition of Danny Barnes on banjo adds nicely to the sound of several tracks.

My favorite cuts on the CD are the title track with its catchy sax, banjo and wonderfully descriptive lyrics. I also love Broken End of Love. Even Bob Dylan hasn't written a song that uses the word metamorphosis. I also like the last cut, Ride, with its bouncy kind of rhythm and great lyrics. My 3-year-old daughter, who is a huge REK fan, likes Ride the best, along with Mama Bear.

If you are already a fan or just curious about Robert's music, you need to buy this CD. You will not be disappointed. Buy it and tell a friend.

I have akways liked REK's music and he is so much fun in concert. While he does not have the best voice, he always puts pure emotion into each song. I was not a big fan of "Farm Fresh Onions" or "Gravitational Forces" so it has been over seven years since his last great album ("Walking Distance" in my opinion). I had about given up on Keen putting out relevant new music and going to a live concert to hear the same 20 or 30 songs over and over gets old. I love "The Pary Never Ends" but I worry about an artist that becomes more a "nostolgia act" playing the same "hit" older songs time after time.

Well, "What I Really Mean" is a tight well written classic. REK is at his best when he stays within the limits of his vocal range, delivers a well crafted story song with emotion and depth. Every song on the CD is well worth a listen (no duds in my mind).

The standout songs are the opening track "For Love" (which I think should be the next single), "The Great Hank" an infectious story song about a night watching a Hank Willioms impersonator, and of course the sweet title track "What I Really Mean".

Don't get me wrong the prior albums I spoke of had some great songs on it but way to many mediocre and just plain bad ones in the mix. This CD does not suffer from any defeciencies. You can pop it into your CD player, sing along to every song and enjoy it from beginning to end.

Thanks REK. Your back at the top of your game after all these years. I highly recommend you get this CD and of course a live show is a must!

FANTASTIC!!!! BUY THIS ALBUM!! Ever sInce Gringo Honeymoon REK has been working. Searching. Trying different things. I applaud his efforts and have always loved the music, but let me say Robert Earl Keen has finally done it. This album is fantastic. This is the first album I have listened to each track TWICE before moving on to the next song. His songwriting is superb. This CD has the old school REK that we all fell in love with but with that twist he has been working towards for nearly 10 years. He is NOT the pluck pluck yuk yuk performer that he was afraid of becoming. Superb. You just gotta buy this CD. Sit back with a cold one and enjoy. What I really mean is this possibly the best REK album yet!

This sterling album of Texas music is an excellent purchase for newbies to the field, a lingering listen for long-term fans, and a good way to get your stodgy old aunt to realize that the best real country music isn't being played on the country radio. Robert Earl Keen's sound is stirring and refuses to be nailed down, venturing far and wide to capture the mood the artist wants to create. And the lyrics are well-written, yoking together the down-home accessibility of Hank Williams with the emotional resonance of William Wordsworth.

If you listen to radio or podcasts focused on alt.country or Americana, you've probably heard several songs off this disk. "The Great Hank" is a shambling, playful spoken-word in which the narrator remembers a very distinctive honky-tonk concert. "For Love" is a good modern take on the traditional murder ballad, while "The Traveling Storm," though its diction tries a little too hard to be Shakespearean, is an excellent story of existential revenge. And the title track, a love song in which a touring artist misses his loved one at home, is one of the few songs you're likely to hear anytime soon with close harmony between a banjo and an alto saxophone.

The album lags a little in the middle. The artist has used his strongest story songs and ballads to bookend the album, not thinking too much about the center of the playlist. Specifically, "The Wild Ones" and "Dark Side of the World" aren't very strong. These songs could have been recorded by a stereotypical Nashville hat act. Robert Earl Keen is capable of better than this. If he wants to make a little extra by selling songs like these to Garth Brooks, he's more than welcome, but his fans have higher expectations than this from the material he releases under his own name.

But these are just two tracks out of eleven really stirring songs. It's easy to let them slide, because the strong songs are so strong that you want to like the whole album. This is a CD that you will want to play at home, at work, in your car, or wherever you can find a CD player waiting to be played. See if, after you hear it once, it doesn't have a permanent treasured place right next to your best stereo.

For those who feel that REK has made a departure his unique style for a more Nashville sound will be thrilled with this album. Comparable to "Gringo Honeymoon," as this album very much has that storyteller feel to it. But where "Honeymoon" was a "drama," "What I Really Mean" is a "comedy." I haven't stopped listening to this album since I got it. Great for any Texas Country Music fan and REK fans will especially love this great album.

As much as I hate to be an echo of most of the previous reviews of this disc, I really have to say that this is his best CD in years. In my mind, this ties with Picnic as his all time best. Robert Earl Keen is a great storyteller and a distinctive singer/songwriter. This CD proves that he is more than just the guy who sings "the party never ends". That certainly doesn't mean that he's lost his sense of humor or his ability to tell stories. It just means that this man can sit down and write some great country music when he wants to.

This CD is honest and warm in ways that his last few CDs have not been. Farm Fresh Onions, Grav. Forces, and Walking Distance all sort of missed the boat in my mind (though each had a few keepers on it) Go pick this one up (along with Picnic).

I bought this cd at a recent live show by REK that I attended and have to say this one's a good one. He performed some of the songs on the cd at the show and everyone there was very accepting, especially when he sang the Hank song. REK is one of America's treasures, a great songwriter, performer and vocalist. Get this one, you will not be disappointed.

I would agree with a few others that his newest studio offering is a comeback of sorts after lesser CDs Gravitational Forces and Farm Fresh Onions. For me the quality songs are "For Love", "What I Really Mean", "The Great Hank" and "Ride". I still haven't gotten into Mr. Wold and Mamabear, but to each his own I guess. Broken end of love is also a dark screamer,but I guess he had something to say with that one. Overall not near the quality of his earlier work (West Textures, Gringo Honeymoon). If I was starting a REK collection, I would buy those two and the Austin City Limits DVD.

As I get ready to up and pack my family back to Texas after being displaced for nearly on twenty years, I had to get some essential Texas to get me in the mood...to move that is. So out I went and got Robert Earl Keen and the Old 97's latest. "What I Really Mean," is yet another peak in a much unexplained just under the radar career of Robert Earl Keen. This is just what the Texas MD ordered...a true slice of a place I once called home and will call home again soon. It's hard to leave a wonderful place like Boise, Idaho but REK's tunes help.

Keen never ceases to surprise. His music seems to become more layered. Though he has strayed in some songs to the semi-experimental, always at the core has been a down home country hippie cross between Willie Nelson, classic blue-grass, folk, and Americana rock. Now he is doing this number, "I Wish You Were Here," that blends banjo and smooth jazz soprano sax. It's a cool laid back breeze of summer Texas wind through a breezeway porch of a West Texas ranch home...let's say Ranger, Texas just for the grins of it. REK's backing band is quite a fine collection of musicians and it shows in the musician-ship throughout.

I can envision my family driving over the border from New Mexico through the panhandle streaming towards Amarillo with the sounds of "The Wild Ones," blowing through open windows. "We were the Wild Ones / The young guns / Restless as the wind / We were the Wild ones now I run / And when I'm done / The Wild Ones will run again." The steel guitar lonely whines high and high, while the drum pounds along the rhythm of the road. Keen is a prolific songwriter and has rarely ever issued any missteps upon the musical world. With "What I Really Mean," he is at top form.

Great guitar picking by Rich Brotherton (REK's best friend since the third grade) in "Long Chain," a smoking dark drifter haunting jailbreak of a song. There's even some North Umbrian Small Pipes of all things appearing on rambling smooth "The Traveling Storm." Boozy drunken swing of Mariachi Cajun, "A Border Tragedy," and finally the album's capstone the whimsical, "Ride," has Keen returning to what brought him there with countrified Texas hill country story-telling. Texas what do you hold for me these days?

I don't know but REK's music will make it all seem right. Go get this one. It's a keeper ya'll.
--MMW

I must admit that I'd heard of REK from way back, and that I rediscoved him due to the Merry Christmas from the Family video - which truly is hilarious. But I digress, after buying the "Live from Austin" CD and "#2 Live Dinner" I bought this one. It is different from some of his earlier albums, but it definitely grows on you.

REK's songwriting skills are in top form. Country artists tell tales and stories with their music and his are some of the best. The "Great Hank" is daring and funny while "What I Really Mean" is a touching song for his wife.

Look, just buy the album and tell a friend or two, it's good music that should be enjoyed by more folks. However, don't tell too many as I won't be able to enjoy the show in the intimacy that I did last month.