Alright Guy

Allan's fourth album originally released in 2001 honors traditional honky tonk and American music without dripping into sentimentality. Includes the bonus track 'Runaway'. Universal.

It's rare for a staunch traditionalist to project an image as a serious musician and a sex symbol, but that's what Gary Allan has been aiming for--and achieving--of late. His 1999 star-making album, Smoke Rings in the Dark, played that sensual card with the title single and its smoldering video, as well as with the randy "Right Where I Need to Be." Now he reprises the formula with "Man of Me," this album's first single, a hard-driving, libido-strutting rocker with such sexual heat it threatens to burst into flames. If that, and its hubba, hubba video are what draw buyers, so be it, but there's plenty else to like here, even if Alright Guy, with too many novelty songs and edgy fillers, falls short of its predecessor. While this album takes Allan farther from the honky-tonk than his previous efforts, there's no resisting a guy who can imbue the heartbreak ballad "What I'd Say" with such restrained anguish, or handle the Western swing of "Adobe Walls" with such aplomb. Of all the stylish guys in Nashville in 2001, he's the one to keep your eye on. --Alanna Nash