For his third album, one-time traditionalist
Ball trades in the honky tonk of his first two albums for more conventional contemporary country. And while he still has the barroom voice to make even the corniest of material sound soulful and authentic, there is an abundance of barely average songs filling out
Play's songbook. Worse, the Nashville gloss is piled on heavy, turning
Ball's strum and twang into just another outing from a probationary member of Music City's hat club. Still, there's an edge to several of the songs here that a bigger selling artist like
Garth Brooks could never muster. A slight misstep. ~ Michael Gallucci