Mike Bella - Lost In The Shuffle

Oh, yeah, this is a good 'un. Hardcore honkytonk is in safe care and fine voice with Mike Bella. Lost in the Shuffle is just where you're going to want to lose your way if you love the hard stuff.

It occasions pleasure from beginning nearly to end. It makes one wish - let's upgrade that to hope - that hardcore honkytonk music is on its way to becoming an enduring genre like bluegrass, surviving and thriving even without life support from mainstream radio.

Bella sings in front of a swinging band entirely in step with his vision of hillbilly heaven. Not himself a songwriter, he is a man of exemplary taste in other composers' work. There's a debt - though not an overwhelming one - to Buck Owens in his vocals, and there are two songs from Owens's catalogue. But that's OK. Supremely confident, Bella puts his own brand on them. ~ Rambles.net

• I Won't Live That Long
• Love Lives On
• Give Me Flowers
• White Line Fever
• Might As Well Stayed At Home
• Loves Gonna Live Here
• What We Don't Have
• Wild Side Of Me
• Over And Over
• Lost In The Shuffle
• When Jesus Calls All His Children In
• Hot Country Nights