{"id":9258,"date":"2014-07-22T15:02:19","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T15:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=9258"},"modified":"2014-07-22T15:02:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T15:02:19","slug":"ridley-bent-wildcard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2014\/07\/22\/ridley-bent-wildcard\/","title":{"rendered":"Ridley Bent &#8211; Wildcard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/2014\/07\/22\/ridley-bent-wildcard\/ridley-bent-cover-art\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9259\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9259\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/ridley-bent-cover-art-299x300.jpg\" alt=\"ridley-bent-cover-art\" width=\"299\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The third full length from Winnipeg\u2019s Ridley Bent delivers 12 tracks of the kind of country fans of Ridley\u2019s have come to expect.<!--more--> Starting off with the brooder \u201cFill Yer Boots,\u201d <i>Wildcard <\/i>features the white hot guitar picking of Chris Dunn throughout, along with pedal steel gold courtesy of John Ellis and, in some spots, Ken Campbell. The record picks up with second track, \u201cThe Most Beautiful Woman Around,\u201d which is sure to get dancefloors full in honky tonks from Winnipeg to 100 Mile House, Edmonton to Austin. The rest of the ten tracks alternate between slow dance ready numbers (\u201cGood Ol\u2019 Cowboy Angel Band\u201d) and two-steppers (\u201cBrooklyn, Texas\u201d ). Bent\u2019s lyrics often take centre stage, as the singer crafts stories of hard luck gamblers and broken hearts. A cover of Tom Petty\u2019s \u201cYou Got Lucky\u201d not only fits right into the gambler\u2019s theme of the album, but makes it hard not hear the original as a country tune. The final three tracks are devoted to \u201cThe Blood Trilogy\u201d of tunes, where an even darker side of the country cannon is explored in \u201cCrooked &amp; Loaded,\u201d \u201cBlood on the Stage,\u201d and \u201cWho\u2019s the Devil Now.\u201d While <i>Wildcard<\/i> doesn\u2019t necessarily have the barn burning singles (\u201cBuckles &amp; Boots,\u201d \u201cNine Inch Nails,\u201d and \u201cI Can\u2019t Turn My Back on the Bottle\u201d) that his previous two records had, the overall result is stronger, and more consistent. A great record to spend an evening playing cards and drinking to. (Americana North, <a href=\"http:\/\/ridleybent.com\" target=\"_blank\">ridleybent.com<\/a>) <b>Sheldon Birnie<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The third full length from Winnipeg\u2019s Ridley Bent delivers 12 tracks of the kind of country fans of Ridley\u2019s have come to expect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[432,563],"class_list":["post-9258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-hillbilly-highway","tag-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}