Blake Shelton's Barn & Grill

1	Some Beach 3:24
2	Nobody But Me 2:38
3	Good Old Boy, Bad Old Boyfriend 3:03
4	Love Gets in The Way 3:30
5	Goodbye Time 3:23
6	Cotton Pickin' Time 3:16
7	What's On My Mind 3:05
8	When Somebody Knows You That Well 3:41
9	On A Good Day 3:34
10	The Bartender 3:16
11	I Drink 3:25

Barnes & Noble

Loving, leaving, loafing, lamenting, liquoring up: Blake Shelton covers the essentials on Barn & Grill, an ingratiating collection of contemporary honky-tonk sketches, flavored with pedal steel, twanging guitar, and a touch of R&B. Almost all of the album's themes are covered in the Jimmy Buffett homage "Some Beach," which opens the album with a hint of lilting tropicalia and a title that works both as epithet and fantasy destination in this scenario. Contrary to its title, the feisty shuffle "Cotton Pickin' Time" isn't about toiling in the fields but rather about sealing the deal, so to speak, with a bodacious Tupelo gal whom the narrator winds up marrying. "What's On My Mind" is a nicely turned mid-tempo honky-tonk to-do, rife with moaning pedal steel and protesting fiddle lines, from a man whose indecisiveness may cost him the apple of his eye. A chiming guitar sets up "The Bartender," an atmospheric country ballad about the fellow who sets up everybody else and recognizes them only by their choice of beverage and the sad stories that accompany their libations. Appropriately woozy, the off-kilter boozing song "I Drink" explains the narrator's self-defining choice in a torpid mix of twang and mocking pedal steel howls, as Shelton plays the part well with a drawling, lazy vocal in defense of his extending a family tradition. Settin' 'em up and knockin' 'em down with impunity, Shelton has populated this particular Barn & Grill with memorable, true-blue country tunes and multi-dimensional -- albeit bedeviled -- characters. It's quite a hangout. David McGee

All Music Guide

Although he's delivered two promising albums, country singer Blake Shelton has had a bit of problem finding his own voice. On his first record, he was a hardcore country singer and on his second, 2003's The Dreamer, he tempered his country with anthemic heartland rock and contemporary Nashville songcraft. His third album, 2004's Blake Shelton's Barn & Grill, finds a happy medium between the two extremes. While he can still delve a little too deeply into country corn -- especially on the ballads -- he finds a happy balance between Nashville craft and pure country, throwing a bit of everyman charm and a little of Kenny Chesney's Jimmy Buffett fixation into the mix as well. All of this makes Shelton a bit of an all-purpose contemporary country singer -- he can do it all from the honky tonk ("Cotton Pickin' Time") to the beach ("Some Beach") and everywhere in between -- but since most of Barn & Grill has its heart in hardcore country, it winds up as his best, most assured album to date. Stephen Thomas Erlewine