Highways & Heartaches

After scoring four Top Ten country hits off his debut album Old Enough to Know Better in 1995-1996, Wade Hayes enjoyed more moderate success with his second and third discs, 1996's On a Good Night and 1998's When the Wrong One Loves Your Right, each of which spawned a sole Top Ten hit and some also-rans. Atypically, his new label Monument (like his old one, Columbia, within the Sony corporation) seems not to have chosen an advance single from his fourth album, but there are several singles possibilities among the record's ten tracks. Possessed of a flexible baritone that can ride roughly over the up-tempo numbers and croon smoothly through the ballads, Hayes is equally effective in either mode. The songwriting doesn't rise above Nashville formula style, but among the more fast-paced tunes, lead-off track "Up North (Down South, Back East, out West)" and "That's What Honky Tonks Are For" sound like possible radio fodder, while among the slow ones, "She Used to Say That to Me" and "You Were, You Are, You'll Always Be" stand out. The closer, "I'm Lonesome Too," is a mid-tempo song on which Hayes breaks into an attractive falsetto on the chorus. Highways and Heartaches doesn't sound like the album to turn around Wade Hayes' slowly declining career, but with Monument's promotional muscle behind it may help him maintain his current status.