It’s been five years since Mark Wills had both a hit single and released an album of all-new material.  While radio has seemingly moved on to other people, that hasn’t stopped Wills from recording songs that fit well-within the contemporary country music radio climate.  In fact, Mark’s new album, “Familiar Stranger,” is packed with ‘em.  After signing to Equity Records to release this album in early 2007, Wills has moved to new label Tenacity Records to finally get his album to the public.

One-time single “Days Of Thunder” leads off the album and it finds Wills singing about the good and happy times of his youth.  Written by producer Brett James and Aimee Mayo, the song is very much looking back on that special summer.  Current radio single “The Things We Forget,” written by Wendell Mobley and Connie Harrington, is catchy and I’m surprised that radio hasn’t picked up the single more than it has.  It has all of the hallmarks that radio loves, perhaps it’s just the smaller label from keeping Mark on the radio as the song and it’s lyrics are not much different than the songs that he had hits with during the last decade. 

The Jeffrey Steele/Bart Allmand co-write “Closer” has an even more radio ready sound than the singles have.  But at this point on the album I can’t but help to feel as if these songs are blending together a little bit.  It’s a theme that continues on the country-rocker “Panama City” as well.  While Mark is technically fine vocally, he doesn’t seem as passionate on these tracks as he has in the past.  Also the production could’ve benefited from taking an all-out ‘rock’ approach as the mix is tuned way down. 

I’m getting tired of the plethora of “redneck” songs in country music. However, “Rednecks Anonymous” does manage to come off sounding very clever, particularly when compared to the lyrically similar “You Can’t Hide Redneck” from Tracy Lawrence.  “The Likes Of You” is a groovy track that sounds quite different than most of the other tracks on the CD. First of all, the song has a retro-sounding melody that also is a little sexy.  This is the kind of song that Wills has always excelled at.  Written by D. Vincent Williams, John Scott Sherrill and Don Rollins, the song is by far the most traditional sounding track on the record.  Hopefully they’ll try releasing it to radio. 

“Crazy White Boy” is another uptempo song that could’ve had the instruments mixed up more (like they are on “Rednecks” and “Likes of You”).  Lyrically the song is but another ‘redneck, southern boy’ song but that doesn’t mean that it won’t find an audience and it probably is a fun song for Mark to sing live.  Brett James wrote that one with Blair Daily and he also co-wrote “All The Crap I Do” with John Bettis.  It’s another song that shows off Wills’ strength, the ballads.  And that’s what’s at the root of this album.  Like Craig Morgan, Mark Wills has a distinctive voice on ballads but tends to blend into the crowd with the uptempo numbers.   Despite there being a couple of songs on here that I’m not overly fond of, I still think “Familiar Stranger” is an album that will please most of Mark Wills’ long-time fans, even if it doesn’t win him many new ones.

Note: In celebration of the  realease of the album and the song "Entertaining Angels," Mark Wills has teamed up with Childrens Miracle Network to donate a portion of the proceeds of the sale of this album to them.  If you'd like to help out more, feel free to click here.  If you donate $25 or more, Mark will give you a free pair of Skullcandy headphones.

Roughstock is also presenting a giveway for this CD.  To win an autographed copy, enter here.