SOUNDS SO GOOD - ASHTON SHEPHERD
There are debut albums, and then there are debut albums that serve notice that the landscape has changed. Twenty-one-year-old Alabama native Ashton Shepherd and producer Buddy Cannon have delivered the latter. Unabashedly country in production and theme, the set is refreshing, authentic and delightfully un-PC. Liquor? Lots of it. Heartache? Check. Dirt roads? Several. Single “Takin’ Off This Pain” is destined to be an anthem for women fed up with relationships going nowhere. “I Ain’t Dead Yet” finds the singer balancing motherhood and marriage with a night out on the town, while “Not Right Now” embraces “a pint of Crown and a country sound.”
