Christian Kane Digs Deep with "The House Rules"

Christian Kane has always has his country music calling bubbling beneath the surface of his acting career. On all of the television shows he is known for, they eventually found a way for him to sing. Fans that have followed him through "Fame LA" to "Angel" and now the hit TNY series "Leverage" have been expectantly waiting for his big label debut, a chance to finally hear Christian devote himself to a run at country music stardom.

It's impossible to be disappointed with the result. Christian Kane's "The House Rules" sounds like a greatest hit album released by a road-weary country artist who has found himself lost between Hank Jr. and Robert Earl Keen and means to make up the distance by just taking a shot and playing through.

The Bob Ezrin and Jimmy Lee Sloas produced album begins with the rowdy bar sing along title track, but things immediately take a turn into a more reflective state with "Something's Gotta Give" which serves as an anthem for the blue collar worker and a cathartic release for Kane who has had to put his country music ambition aside due to his day job.

Kane is a co-writer on most of the songs and the tracks reflect his previous knack for an alt-country sound brought unexpectedly home by clever pop hooks that show real songwriting flair. Kane may be one of those rare artists suffering under the burden of being constitutionally unable to put out a song that doesn't sound good.

"Thinking of You" is a solid torch song with an ultra-catchy hook. He follows it with the bar busting rock of "Whiskey in Mind" but quickly reigns things in with a fantastic torch song turned up-tempo rocker called "Let's Take a Drive" which puts a jolt into what could have been a nostalgic ballad.

"Calling All County Women" is a shout-out to Kane's loyal Kaniacs who somehow seem to make it out to show after show. But as easy as it goes down it's immediately upstaged by "American Made" which is an anthem that plays out as if someone shoved Jimmy Buffet, Hank Jr. and Bruce Springsteen into an electric mixer and hooked up an amplifier.

"Let Me Go" is a song previously released by Jason Michael Carroll that Christian Kane pursued and wanted on the album. Here, the twisty tale of a cowboy trying to get his girl to forget him gets an injection of adrenalin and sounds unexpectedly uplifting as the characters reconcile love and reality.

"Seven Days" is a join along Vegas or bust song that could have rocked the album home on a nice carpe diem note, but the last two songs instead fold everything together with resilience if not redemption. The Whitney Duncan and Jonathan Singleton song "Making Circles" is as powerful a tune about a co-dependent couple as has been released in the last year.

Kane ends the CD with a cover of Tracey Chapman's "Fast Car" a song that has been crying out for a county treatment ever since its release. Kane does the right thing and plays the song straight as a true blues anthem which sounds both stillborn and urgent at the same time.

Overall Christian Kane's big label country music debut sells us almost too much at once. The depth and staying-power of the songs here signify a strong new performer in country music, but it's hard to tell if he will have the time (or county radio will have the room) for Christian Kane to burst into the spotlight.

The fact that those questions fit entirely into the theme of the CD "The House Rules" itself cannot be accidental. Christian Kane will always burn with a lyrical inner fire...it'll just be interesting for us to see on what stage that flame ignites.

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