Gary Allan: Tough All Over : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Country singers are notorious for serving up tales of heartache with a wink and a smile -- see Gary Stewart's "She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)," et al. But Gary Allan's sixth album is, unfortunately, chillingly authentic. Recorded in the wake of his wife's suicide, Tough All Over lives up to its title with tear-jerkers like "Putting My Misery on Display," "Ring" (featuring the line "I'm sure gonna miss the hand that you were on") and "Puttin' Memories Away," an all-too-real account of a man in an empty home, a la George Jones' "The Grand Tour." Elsewhere, Allan -- a Californian who prefers the gritty guitar sound of Bakersfield heroes Buck Owens and Merle Haggard to the syrupy strings of Nashville -- shows some toughness of his own, churning out rugged survival anthems like "I Just Got Back From Hell" and the title track one power chord at a time. On the striking ballad "Best I Ever Had," he puts it all together, singing in his raspy but sturdy West Coast drawl, "It might take some time to patch me up inside."