From A Room Volume 1
From A Room Volume 1 Youtube
From A Room: Volume 1 won the Grammy for Best Country Album at the 2018 Grammys held on January 28, 2018. In the time between his debut release on May 5, 2015 and his sophomore offering May 5.
Andy Barron When Chris Stapleton elected to release From A Room as, you had to wonder what he was up to. Was Nashville’s biggest “insurgent” star using his new elevated platform to get ambitious, and maybe even a little pretentious? Was he, in the parlance of superstar companion albums, totally using his illusion in service of an epic statement? Actually, no. Chris Stapleton in 2017 is not Axl Rose in 1991, whose extreme megalomania willed into existence two double-albums, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, released on the same day 26 years ago this autumn.
From A Room Volume 1 Chris Stapleton Album
Inherently modest even now as a reigning arena headliner, Stapleton spaced out each From A Room volume about seven months apart, all the better to appreciate the brawny, understated, and well-crafted pleasures of these nearly identical 32-minute albums. But now that both volumes are out in the world, it’s hard to think of them as anything other than a single work that has been arbitrarily split into two records. If forced to choose, I’d say that From A Room: Vol. 2 is maybe a half-notch below this spring’s Vol. The latest From A Room doesn’t match the high points from the first installment — the heart-tugging ballad “Broken Halos,” the blues-rocking “Second One To Know,” the stark closer “Death Room.” But it might be slightly more consistent, cozily settling into a steady mid-tempo groove of jangly guitars and growly, big-papa vocals, per Stapleton’s comfort zone. It feels, in other words, like the back half of a longish LP, the part where the deep cuts are found once you’ve plowed past the front-loaded hits.
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