No Time To Kill

SHAY HEALY recently interviewed Clint Black for the forthcoming series of Music City USA and discovered that the guy is a bonafide U2 freak.

That's hardly surprising, because Black has always been the most rock-based of all the new boys on the country block. . Garth Brooks may take many of his stage antics from rock-kitsch groups such as Kiss but, from his first album onwards Clint Black has always shown that his roots are deeply set in band-based music.

No Time To Kill is no exception, though supplementing his own long-time band are guest musicians like jazz-based percussionist Lenny Castro, fiddle player Stuart Duncan and the ever-reliable Jerry Douglas on dobro. Wynonna Judd also lays her liquid vocal lines on A Bad Goodbye, a musical union no doubt strengthened by their current US tour together.

Like a riposte to his first album, Killin' Time, this collection clearly shows that Black has realised there is, as he says, in the title song 'No Time To Kill' and no time to present sometimes sub-standard material, as was the case with his last album, The Hard Way. But then legal battles with his manager, Bill Ham, mixed reviews of The Hard Way and marriage to Lisa Hartman have obviously kicked his ass in terms of maturity and it shows. The laid-back, armchair philosophising evident on early songs, like 'Live And Learn' has been translated to a view from the centre of the whipping floor - as in, 'A Good Run Of Bad Luck'.

But if it is the wittiest of twists in titles and lyrics you're looking for, check 'Tuckered Out' an insider's view of contemporary country music. If you can find more puns in a single lyric send it to Clint Black and demand a refund. "I'm Haggard, worn and Waylon from the bottom of my Restless Heart/Don't know Wy the Black cloud's tailin' me/There seems to be no Parton from the dark."

Linking this, with its lyric line, "A Man does what he Wills, as long as he stays on his toes," is Black's obvious base in Bob Wills-style Texas music, rather than in Nashville. The point is made even more authentically in 'I'll Take Texas'. Having been in that most pluralistic of country music states in the past month I can easily understand why Black's roots' are set equally in country rock and pop. And when Wynonna joins Clint Black for A Bad Goodbye it's stripped-down poetry and pain set to music, especially for lovers forced to disentangle their lives, hearts and flesh from one another.

Clint Black and Wynonna Judd. New country don't come any better than this.

* Joe Jackson