Sunday, December 15, 2013

Mason Proffit - Still Hangin'


    ANAICT, Still Hangin' is Mason Proffit's most-recent offering.  Amazon lists it as being issued on 01 August 2005.  I found it quite by accident via Freegal, which had 10 of the 12 tracks available.  And I bought the other two via Amazon for $0.99 each.

- Tracks  (Favorites in Pink -

01. Lilly
02. Single Mom
03. Buffalo
04. Big Boat
05. Two Hangmen
06. Old Guys Rule
07. Victoria
08. Old Joe Clark
09. Everything
10. Better Find Jesus
11. Western Man
12. Amazing Grace

   The usual caveat applies - I could easily just mark all the tracks pink.  But I've been a Mason Proffit fan for decades.  About half the tracks are reworks of earlier MP songs; the other half are new material, at least to me.

    The musicianship is fantastic, but we expect that.  Terry Talbot's voice hasn't lost a note, which is simply amazing after 40 years in the music business.  The reworked material is well-done.  It's nice to hear slightly different guitar licks, and Talbot tweaks a few words here and there, sometimes to modernize the lyrics (see Lilly), but mostly to slip in a bit of evangelizing.

   This shouldn't be surprising, if you've followed Talbot's musical and spiritual journeys after the break-up of Mason Proffit. Yet it does weaken this album a bit and makes you wonder who the target audience is.  His born-again fans will find Still Hangin' entirely too secular, and his Mason Proffit fans will resent the proselytizing, sporadic though it may be.  OTOH, the most blatant 'gospel' song here is Better Find Jesus, and that's an old MP song.

   If you can overlook Talbot's occasional preachiness, and it really isn't overbearing, you will find this an excellent album.  It sells for $8.99 at Amazon, or you can get most of it for free (3 songs a week) at Freegal.  Highly recommended.  And many thanks to Mason Proffit for making this available via Freegal.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Really I am a born again believer and i still like the old mason profitt and many of the old bands of my childhood.