Music

Chris Young

02 ABC, Glasgow

Rob Adams

FOUR STARS

If Chris Young hadn’t become one of the new young stars of country music he would surely have made it in sales. The Tennessean singer with the very manly voice comes across as the very essence of America’s service culture. You almost expect him to ask the front row if they’d like some French fries with those drinks.

There’s a school of thought that says country music has strayed a bit too far into pop and arena rock over the past twenty years, and Young’s songs and particularly his superbly confident band’s arrangements might easily appeal to those markets. For all his smooth talking and the punchy southern rock of covers such as ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man, however, Young is as country as cowdung.

When he slips into Conway Twitty’s I’d Love to Lay You Down it’s easy to imagine the fourteen-year-old Young, as he mentions later, getting up to sing a George Strait song in a bar back home and doubtless bringing the house down. Those singers are in him and his solo, voice and acoustic guitar version of his own Drinkin’ Me Lonely suggested that an evening of Young unplugged and alone would be a fine way to hear that voice at length.

His fans on this sold-out first appearance in Scotland sounded like they’d be as up for that as they were for the powerful new single, I’m Comin’ Over, the mischievously rawkin’ Save Water, Drink Beer, the bouncy Aw Naw, and the lascivious Getting’ You Home, where a black dress hits the floor and it hasn’t fallen from the kitchen pulley. Next time they might need a bigger venue.