Garth Brooks: Scarecrow : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If Scarecrow is Garth Brooks' final album, as he claims, he's leaving fans with a comprehensive reminder of his uncanny ability to incorporate every musical style into one envelope-pushing definition of country. On Scarecrow, bluegrass, honky-tonk and pop stand side by side with ballads and rock, but the juxtaposition isn't jarring -- it's just typical Garth. Scarecrow touches on the recent upheavals in Brooks' life -- his divorce and the loss of his mother -- in the autobiographical "Thicker Than Blood" and "Pushing Up Daisies." But there are plenty of light-hearted moments here too. "Squeeze Me In" and "Beer Run," Brooks' barn-burning duets with Trisha Yearwood and George Jones respectively, are both good, down-home fun, as is "Rodeo or Mexico," a south-of-the-border tale of cowboy lust. Garth fans already know the sweeping closer, "When You Come Back to Me Again," from the film Frequency, though ending the album with a song that's so obviously about return and redemption raises the question of whether or not this truly is Brooks' swan song. As a final statement from one of the most important artists of the last decade, it's not exactly earth-shattering. But this eclectic, personal and heartfelt Scarecrow is still outstanding in its field.