See If I Care

Tracks include: 1. Drinkin' Dark Whiskey 3:01 2. Can't Do It Today 3:26 3. Tough Little Boys 3:57 4. See If I Care 3:39 5. Songs About Rain 4:25 6. I Can Love You 2:49 7. Don't Look Away 4:32 8. Guys Like Me 2:57 9. Nothing On But The Radio 3:32 10. You Don't Know A Thing About Me 4:18 11. A Showman's Life 4:32

While Nashville hitmakers Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney rose from clunky B-level stars to bankable stadium fillers, Gary Allan quietly tapped his foot waiting for the rest of the world to get hip to his cool. On his fifth album, the California surfer/singer--finally nominated for the CMA Horizon award in 2003--gets back to the smoldering alt-country-goes-mainstream groove that made 1999’s Smoke Rings in the Dark so brilliant, but which he’d abandoned on 2002’s Alright Guy. In a taut tenor, roughed up by cigarettes, liquor, and 3 A.M. ruminations, Allan sings about the inevitable surrender to romantic pain. On "Drinkin’ Dark Whiskey," he swaggers with roadhouse libido, bragging of "tellin’ white lies" as a blistering electric guitar break mocks it all. But by the next song ("Can’t Do It Today"), in which he angrily vows forgiveness won’t come soon for a cheating mate, the lyrics belie his torment: "I can see you dancing in that stranger’s arms/My world hasn’t stopped turning, but it’s fallen apart." Elsewhere, he sings of the joys and fears of fatherhood ("Tough Little Boys") and hauls in Jim Lauderdale for harmonies on the Buck Owens-meets-the-Texas Tornadoes romp of "Guys Like Me." But as the last cut shows, when the lights go down he’s the itinerant musician of Jesse Winchester’s stark "A Showman’s Life" desperate to stave off loneliness. It’s in the album’s blue notes that Allan shows himself to be country’s most important New Voice, superstardom be damned. --Alanna Nash