So when I first heard this song I was so captivated by its instrumentation that I knew it would take a seat in my "Currently Listening" playlist for December 2020. Now, after listening for a little over a week, I feel it is worth a review.
My first music review.
[1] Almost Home - Craig Morgan (YouTube)
You may be thinking this is just another tear-jerkin', cheesy country song that panders to feelings of the "good ol' days" of fishing, fresh cobbler, and fields of hay.
And in a way, you're right -- but hear me out:
While I absolutely love the instrumentation, I think it's best to start with the lyrics, as instrumentation typically supports the lyrics.
Almost Home is a story, specifically about the singer who stumbles upon a homeless man in the middle of winter while it's "5 below" zero out and "freezing rain and spittin' snow". He then checks on the homeless guy because he worried he had died.
The chorus kicks in and now the homeless man is speaking to the singer about what he was doing when he was interrupted by the singer of the song. He lists things like "runnin' from some honey bees" and "walkin' down and ol' dirt road" and it feels a bit confusing until he finishes the chorus with "Man I wish you'd just left me alone; I was almost home".
Wow, that's powerful.
There's a bit to unpack here. While at first it sounds like reminiscing of the good ol' days, its a bit more than that. The homeless man was reliving the best moments of his life in the process of dying and thus the song is making some kind of statement of what life is like after death.
Had the singer left him alone, the homeless man would have been fishing. He would have arrived in his own personal "paradise". This cheesy country song has turned philosophical and interesting.
The song starts off with a sad fiddle/piano duet and then kicks in with a solid guitar riff. Honestly, I don't think the song needs this.
The instrumentation behind the first verse is well played of course, but I find it typical of country music of that time. Pretty, but fairly uninspiring. If you're not aware of the way country music is recorded (specifically in Nashville), basically a song is written, and then it is recorded by "session" musicians. Basically top-tier musicians who can churn out an album in a day. An entire song in 1-2 takes. Its pretty much magic. This first verse feels fairly generic, which can happen with this kind of musical set up. Still, its performed excellently.
The chorus though, is when I think this song jumps to another level. There is cohesiveness and beautiful composition as multiple instruments play the same line together to completely enhance the feeling and emotion of this chorus. In particular, I love the steel guitar lines.
Verse 2 is definitely more stable and I think a better feeling than verse 1.
The bridge, which I think acts perfectly as a bridge, feels a bit too short in terms of content.
Ok, the best part: The final chorus. The bridge ends softly and the first half of the final chorus with the tremolo mandolin, finger picked guitar, and back ground vocals gives us a foreshadow of the quickly approaching build into the final chorus's climax. In that moment of climax we get the fully materialized moment that the other choruses have been alluding to: the walk-down melody after "fields of hay that'd just been mowed". After a second listen, you will notice the motif in each chorus. Its a wonderful composition. Oh yeah -- and the way he sings "man, I just wish you'd have left me alone" differently hits as well.
The only thing lacking is I believe the drum fill leading into the climax. It feels a bit too basic, although nothing wrong with that. I feel it should be a bit more present. I do believe the hits that shortly follow are perfeclty tasteful though. You can't have it all!
Overall, this is a cheesy country song, that introduces an intresting take on an old philosophical question of what happens after we die, and with it brings along a moving and well written composition.