Consumer Guide Album

Garth Brooks: Fresh Horses [Capitol, 1995]
A little heavy-handed (all right, a little more heavy-handed), with three rodeo songs and a big fat Irish anthem that won't be to everyone's taste (all right, your taste). Don't matter, because he's so far from the schlock phony he's taken for--so open-hearted, so extreme, so sui generis--that all but a couple of tracks do his thing even when he's protesting too much (which, all right, may be his thing). Cute trick: the two about marriage explain his weakness for bucking broncos. B+