Coming Home

1	You're Like Comin' Home 4:00
2	Doghouse 3:04
3	I Am a Man 4:25
4	I'll Die Tryin' 4:02
5	Wild 3:57
6	Noise 3:22
7	Little Town 3:08
8	I Never Needed You 3:40
9	What's Wrong With That 3:17
10	Two Bottles of Beer 4:01
11	I Just Want to Love You 4:07
12	When I Go Home Again 2:59

Barnes & Noble

Contemporary country hitmakers Lonestar rock their winning formula a bit on Coming Home, produced by Justin Niebank. The music and vocals both boast a compelling edge -- lead singer Richie McDonald has never sung a pledge of love with the intensity he drills into the surging country power ballad "I'll Die Tryin'," which Niebank neatly frames with keening pedal steel and razor-edged guitar lines snaking through a powerhouse percussive assault that dominates the triumphant choruses. For pure get-down rowdiness, check out McDonald's slyly salacious reading of "Wild" set against a pounding rhythm, stinging, Skynyrd-like guitar solos, and a furious fiddle uprising (fiddle duties are shared by two masters of the instrument, Aubrey Haynie and Stuart Duncan). An appreciation of small-town life and values, "Little Town" is done not as the usual reflective folk poem but rather in rock 'n' roll terms, as it celebrates down-home virtues in a brisk shuffle arrangement marked by exuberant, wailing guitar solos. So it goes on this homecoming -- some southern rock–styled barnburners, some rock-based introspection, and some thoughtful balladeering (of special note is the country-rock love song "I Never Needed You," featuring labelmate Sara Evans). Throughout, the boys display exemplary writing, picking, and singing. Whatever Lonestar thought they might have mislaid on the way to multi-platinum success seems to have been found on this journey back to what made its music special in the first place: heart, and lots of it. David McGee

All Music Guide

There just isn't another country band as aw-shucks normal as Lonestar, the Tennessee quartet that quietly racked up hits across nearly a decade in its recording career. At the dawn of that career, they had a tougher Texas country streak to their music, but as the years rolled on, they smoothed out their rough edges, turning toward music that's country-pop but without any crossover aspirations. Their 2004 album Let's Be Us Again gave them one of their biggest hits thanks to such domestic-minded tunes as "Class Reunion (That Used to Be Us)" and, especially, the number one country hit "Mr. Mom," and for their quickly released 2005 follow-up, Coming Home, they stick closely to that at-home aesthetic. Not only is the album named after coming home; all the songs celebrate long-term, stable relationships, working steady jobs, living in small little towns, painting an idyllic picture of the United Red States of America. The music is clean and shiny, relying on steady midtempo pop anthems, occasionally dipping into ballads and never breaking a sweat when the tempos get turned up. It's well done and professional and sometimes the sweetly earnest sentiments of the songs add up to some good old-fashioned country corn, such as on "Two Bottles of Beer," which is a nice spin on Rodney Crowell's "American Dream," and the album sparks to life with the bluegrass-inspired closer, "When I Go Home Again." It's not bad, and it's certainly listenable and the guys are likeable. Stephen Thomas Erlewine