Song Review: LoCash, “One Big Country Song”

Sorry fellas, but you’re going to have to take a bigger swing than this.

If careers were gas tanks, then LoCash is staring at a low fuel light right now. They haven’t had a solid radio hit since 2016’s “I Know Somebody,” and while their latest single “Feels Like A Party” did just enough to convince Wheelhouse Records to release Brothers into the wild, its #26 airplay peak excited exactly no one (and its quality earned it a spot on my 2018 worst-song list along with its predecessor “Don’t Get Better Than That”). Group members Chris Lucas and Preston Brust need a humdinger of a single to justify keeping their parking space in the country music lot, and their latest attempt at obtaining one is “One Big Country Song,” the second single from their latest album. While its admittedly a step up from the garbage they’ve been foisting on it over the last year or so, it’s still a long way from being good or memorable, and it’s questionable as to whether it will have enough oomph to earn the duo a continue before they run out of extra lives.

The production is the same old summery, party-ready mix that everyone else is leaning on (seriously, Chris Janson used the exact same setup and arrangement on “Good Vibes.), and ends up sounding like every other song LoCash has ever released. After a brief opening with some acoustic and electric guitars with actual texture, it quickly morphs into exactly what you’d expect: Bright, overly-clean electric guitars backed by a mixture of real and synthetic percussion (of course there’s a clap track here; why would you expect anything different?). It’s the same old empty sonic calories LoCash always delivers, and the moderate tempo (which is slow by LoCash standards) means it doesn’t even bring the energy it usually does. There’s just nothing distinct or memorable here, and it while its light, bouncy vibes complement the positive nature of the lyrics, it doesn’t motivate the listener to actually pay attention to the lyrics, and the whole thing just flows in one ear and out the other, forgotten as soon as the next track comes on.

I’ve never cared enough to actually determine whether Lucas or Brust is the lead singer, but honestly, it sounds like they kidnapped Janson as well as his producer to make this song happen. The singer’s delivery is mediocre at best, as their range is never really tested during the singing parts and their flow on the pseudo-rapping lines feels awkward and uncomfortable (the singer also loses all their tone and power, and generally sounds awful).   Worst of all, the listener only kinda-sorta feels the good vibes being put out by the duo, and their attempts to pitch a big tent and say “hey, we’re all country!” feel completely disingenuous and unconvincing (the lyrics deserve a lot of blame for this, as we’ll discuss later). As hard as they try to step away from their Bro personas and sell us a deeper message, this feels like the same party-hearty narrator I’ve heard on every other LoCash song, and I’m just not interested in hearing from them anymore.

I have two major problems with the lyrics:

• • The narrator paints using the broadest, most-general brush they can possibly find, like a medium or psychic fishing for someone to connect with their vague statements. Everything the narrator references as about as vague and generic as it could possibly stated, most pointedly on the bridge:
    

    Who ain’t got a story to tell?
    And who ain’t made it through some hell?
    Who don’t love somebody, don’t miss somebody?

    In casting a wide net like this, the song eschews the interesting details that might actually entice people to pay attention, and ends up failing to connect with anyone at all.

• On the surface, this is a “bring everyone together” song, with the narrator trying to convince everyone that they’re all the same deep down. However, if you listen to some of their scenarios they use to try to convince us of this (wild times in our youth, holy blue jeans, drinking after work, closing down bars), you realize that no, we all don’t actually have these experiences or perform these activities. The song would like you to think that it’s trying to unite us instead of divide us, but quite a bit of this stuff is ripped straight from the “I’m so country!” tunes that are clogging up the airwaves right now. This track is as geared to the stereotypical country audience as any other song, and I’d be offended at their attempt to pull the wool over our eyes if the song didn’t put me to sleep so fast.

“One Big Country Song” is nothing but one big snorefest, and gives the audience no good reason to do anything but catch up on their sleep while it’s playing. The production is aggressively bland, the writing is vague and tries to sell us a bill of goods about how inclusive it is when it’s really not, and LoCash just kind of exists amidst all the chaos. A forgettable track like this may be better than the drivel this duo has subjected us all to over the last few years, but forgettable doesn’t put gas in the tank, and LoCash may soon be stuck hitchhiking their way out of Nashville.

Rating: 5/10. One big mess.

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