Midland – Ready to Roll review: Big on twanging guitar, low on any authenticity

You know that Bo Burnham sketch about country music? The one that parodies its platitudes, and jokes that much of it is written by multi-millionaires in private jets who’ve never driven the pick-up trucks they proclaim to venerate and instead harness these tropes to cynically purchase mass-market appeal?

Watch it on YouTube to give some context to Texan country outfit Midland’s new album, Ready To Roll, which is big on twanging guitar, deep Southern snarls and uses of the word “baby”, and feels low on any authenticity.

The main problem is that while good country music tells an evocative, coherent folksy tale in three to four minutes, Midland’s efforts are quite baffling: a collection of images that don’t amount to a story you can really believe in.

Ready to Roll just feels an exercise in ticking off the tropes: an adulterous girlfriend (in Cheatin’ Songs), a good-time guy in Mr Lonely, something about a long car/truck journey (Fourteen Gears was too inpenetrable to say for sure). It goes through many of the motions but feels heartless.