Toby Keith: Unleashed : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If you're running down the country, hoss, you're walking on the fighting side of Toby Keith. Like Merle Haggard and Charlie Daniels at their most jaw-juttingly patriotic, this Oklahoma tough guy is pissed off, and he's itching to sing about it. Keith can deliver a controversial anthem like "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" in a way that's moving even if you don't subscribe to his America-right-or-wrong flag waving. "Red, White and Blue" is a folk song, really, sung with a confident twang and driven by big, ringing acoustic and electric guitars. His ode to post-September 11th America feels sincere -- even if his line about lighting up Central Asian skies "like the Fourth of July" sounds pretty awful considering the recent U.S. bombing of an Afghan wedding party.

Keith continues to be a likable right-winger throughout the album: The cool and cocky strut of "Who's Your Daddy" comes with a wink of humility, and "Beer for My Horses" (a duet with Willie Nelson) plays to everybody's vigilante fantasies. The album loses momentum when the outspoken singer unleashes obligatory Nashville schmaltz like "Rock You Baby" and the cutesy "Huckleberry." For the most part, though, Unleashed puts the grits and gravy back into mainstream country.