An Unlikely Cowboy

Every Tuesday, I get a nice email from the folks at Itunes outlining the new music that is available for purchase that particular week. Normally, I skim through it, paying half-attention to little things like the fact that the entire cast of "My Wife and Kids" now has enough clout to get their own celebrity playlists while I marvel at the fact that Fall Out Boy keeps churning out downloadable hits.

But this week, I was taken back by one of the new artists. That's right, it's the kid-shrinker, Rick Moranis. He's got a new album coming out called the Agoraphobic Cowboy which you can get on Itunes, but can only pre-order on Amazon. Could that be any weirder? As you may expect, the entire thing is something of a satire on country music, but he also says that he's been listening to a lot of Widespread Panic and String Cheese Incident, and he dabbles in playing it straight on some of the songs. I listened to snippets of the album and almost all of the songs seem like a cross between Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" and Shawn Mullins' "Lullabye" with a smidge of Chris Gaines thrown in for good measure, most of which end up with him trying too hard to be clever.

The weird thing is that the album seems to be getting fairly consistent good reviews from amateur critics on blogs and on Itunes, and I'm guessing that the music media will follow suit. I'm almost sure he'll soon show up on the ultra-hip XM Radio Channel 75, which I often play in my living room to impress guests. Man, I never thought that not thinking Rick Moranis was cool would negatively influence my own coolness, but given my historic ability to stay alongside my peers in terms of my music choices, I'm not sure why I'm surprised.