I don't see TGFH as a misstep - it's grown in stature and affection for me with repeat listens. I think the "home town" theme is significant for Carrie - and probably for quite a few of her listeners in the Country community (both those who've directly experienced the home town ethos themselves, and those who are city and suburb dwellers with a nostalgic identification with an imagined rural idyll (the latter group making up a significant and growing part of the radio audience). However, the theme in TGFH can work two ways - there are also people for whom the home town ethos has no resonance at all, or sometimes a negative resonance (a stifling memory of conformity and petty preoccupation with other people's business.) Hence it's potentially a divisive theme, that will work for some listeners and not others. I think it's a suitable song, though, for an album in which Carrie has sensibly tried to mix innovative and adventurous songs with a range of songs that span the potential range of her listeners, across the contemporary Country and not-so-Country spectrum.
And that, I think, is one of the strengths of this album. We have songs like GG and FC that take Carrie vocally into very different, but equally remarkable, challenges even she probably wasn't sure she could triumph in. We have a strongly symbolic and elemental survival-from-abuse song, and a broodingly powerful Gothic murder ballad. We have songs that address different facets of the Country spectrum (the Roots stomp that drives LLA, the great Country Rock feel of CGAS, the neo-traditional WAW - and, even though it's far from my favourite, the "Margaritaville" sound of OWT). I think it's into that spectrum that the nostalgia of TGFH fits - and, lyrically, it's a very good example of its type.
There is, in fact, only one song that I find disappointing - SYA (which, if it was anyone but Carrie, I'd never listen to again.). That personal judgment, by the way, has nothing to do with the lyric - which is an inspiring message - but everything to do with the musical style, which I find very unappealing. That, though, is neither here nor there. I still support its inclusion, and don't regard it as a misstep, because it has appeal for another part of Carrie's listener spectrum, and therefore justifies its place on a very varied album.
So my overall verdict is that this album has stood up to expectations and has grown in interest, and in the discovery of more detail and points to admire with repeat listening. For me it is her strongest studio album yet (a feeling I never had when PO came out, despite my love of SWISLY and SLT as individual tracks)
I think it is her best CD to date, and a second for me would be Carnival Ride.
