BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

All Music Guide:

All of this in a mainstream rock & roll album? You bet. It's got it all: pleasure, desire, jeremiads, love, disillusionment, big drums, rollicking guitars, and above all an accessible kind of passion. The scorcher that intersects American music at the crossroads of Johnny Rivers, J.B. Lenoir, Gene Vincent, the Staple Singers, and Mellencamp's own "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." is the closer, "Heaven Is a Lonely Place." The track actually ends at 4:30, and after a little over three minutes of silence, there's a tough surprise that lasts until the 12-minute mark. Freedom's Road is not merely a new (or another) John Mellencamp album, but the work of a populist artist at his very best; he's spinning his heart-worn, ragged roots rock tomes about struggle, determination, and the possibility of redemption. He's not promising anything like a foregone conclusion at this point, but it's there if we want it bad enough. Song-wise, this is a stronger album from Mellencamp than we had any right to expect, and an excellent from-the-cradle album when we need it most.

Thom Jurek

Okay, forgive Mellencamp the Chevy commercial. After all, it's a good tune. So, he sold out a little. The last song on this CD makes up for it when you realize that the Rodeo Clown is none other than George W.

"Homophobic hypocrites scaring us half to death/
Journalistic lapdogs can's seem to find the truth."

Oh, you got to love it.

And Joan Baez joins Mellencamp on the haunting "Jim Crow": "You can call it what you want, it's still a minstrel show."

As a USA Today profile of Mellencamp and "Freedom's Road" notes:

A scrappy rebel not known to back away from a fight, Mellencamp exhibits dovelike contempt for U.S. war policies and leadership, underscored in the Bush-bashing Rodeo Clown.

"I'm a peacenik, which is not to be confused with a pacifist," he says. "I was doing radio interviews right after 9/11, and when I said we need to go over there and find out why (the terrorists) thought this was a plausible solution, the guy went berserk. He said, 'You gotta be crazy. We gotta nuke these guys.' That was the first time I got a sense of the mob mentality out there.

"People were eaten up with fear and revenge, but they didn't even know who to get even with. 'We're America, and we'll come over and kick your (butt).' We barely pulled that out in World War II. That doesn't even work in a bar. Why would you run the world that way?" [End of quotation from USA Today.]

From a New York Times interview with Mellencamp:

Though Mr. Mellencamp opted to avoid a more overtly politicized album, he couldn’t resist including “Rodeo Clown,” a harsh attack on President Bush and the Iraq war, with lines about “blood on the hands of the rich politicians” and “blood on the hands of an arrogant nation.” The song isn’t listed on the packaging and appears several minutes after the album’s last track.

“When I wrote that song two years ago,” Mr. Mellencamp said, “the truth was nowhere in sight. But as the climate changed, now that song feels right on target.”

(Special note: "Rodeo Clown" is not listed on the album. It is a "special" at the end of the disc, after a pause.)


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS