Neon Blue, on the other hand, examines a very different, often forsaken era: the early 1990s. "The last bastion of country music," says the professor, "was the early 1990s, roughly 1989 and 1996. You could turn on the radio and immediately know you're hearing a country song. You could still hear steel guitar and fiddle. But there was a hard fork around 1996 or '97, when country veered off into pop territory. Neon Blue asks, What if that fork had never happened? What if country kept on sounding like country?"
That era may have been dismissed by traditionalists at the time as slick or overproduced, but Hedley finds something exciting in that old hat-act sound, and Neon Blue plays up the excitement of bigger-than-life choruses, the relatable emotions of those sad-eyed ballads, and the inventiveness of the lively production. "The sound is modern," he says, "but it's still discernibly country."
Side A
1 Broke Again
2 Country & Western
3 Old Heartbroken Blues
4 The Last Thing In The World
5 Down To My Last Lie
6 Free
Side B
1 Neon Blue
2 Bury Me With My Boots On
3 Found In A Bar
4 Lat's Make A Memory
5 Wonder If You Wonder
6 River In The Rain