Caught Up In The Country

Rodney Atkins has experienced a life change or two since releasing his last full-length album, 2011’s Take a Back Road, including marrying and welcoming a son with singer-songwriter Rose Falcon. Those personal moments clearly have entranced him, and they arise in happy confessions and touching odes on his fifth album, Caught Up in the Country. Falcon guests on the slow-tempo “Figure Out You (Riddle),” her voice fitting hand in glove with Atkins’ gravelly timbre.

But Caught Up isn’t all rose-colored moments. Atkins’ second track with Falcon, the string-sweetened “Everybody’s Got Something,” looks at the shadows that loom over life, while the traditional country closer “Waiting on a Good Day” finds circumstances so dire that Atkins will “have to cheer up to cry.” Throughout, Atkins explores the acoustic and anthemic style that informed his previous four albums, but he also takes new steps forward, infusing the album with EDM touches. On the beat-heavy title track, featuring the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Atkins stretches his sound with slick production.