About this Artist

• Biography

Editorial Reviews

"I got drunk in Raleigh and I played too long/Word got back to Nashville before I got back home/The record label said, 'Boy, you better straighten up your act'/The lawyers told me, 'Son, that's what the contracts say'/So I got good and sober and I stayed that way/Still you couldn't find a Worley record on the rack/I did everything they asked me to do/And still they went and cut me loose" -- that's how Darryl Worley begins Here and Now, his fourth album and the follow-up to his huge debut, Have You Forgotten?, whose post-9/11 anthem made Worley a brief sensation in the early days of the Iraqi War. "Do You Remember" made Worley omnipresent for a while there -- the song was on the radio, scorned by liberals, and embraced by Republicans -- which would seem to be enough to guarantee Worley another shot at a major label, but if the story he lays out on "Jumpin' off the Wagon" is even a quarter true, he wasn't ready to play by the rules -- which isn't necessarily the same thing as being a bona fide outlaw. Worley pretty much plays by the rebel handbook, swaggering to a blueprint as he rocks his country just enough to not be pop but not enough to truly surprise. Frankly, he's just a bit too well groomed -- not just in image but in sound -- to have this outsized outlaw persona fit, as his voice isn't muscled enough, all the guitars are bit too well scrubbed, and the rhythms are just a bit too clean and tight. That said, Here and Now is a significant step forward for Worley, because even he doesn't feel as gritty as he'd like to be -- it's not quite the "country music with a nasty groove" that he sings about on "Party Song" (which is itself a dead ringer for the Faces' immortal end-of-the-party anthem "Had Me a Real Good Time" -- he's not only more fun in this incarnation, but his songs are generally stronger too, particularly that statement of purpose "Jumpin' off the Wagon," which provides him with a mission statement that he valiantly tries to fulfill here. If he doesn't quite do it, at least he's headed in the right direction. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Customer Reviews

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