Billy Currington, James Otto Keep Country's Yacht Rocking

Otto is the brother-in-law of Rascal Flatts’s Jay Demarcus, who helped produce his album; he’s also part of Big N Rich’s Muzik Maffia camp, which means his other producer is John Rich, who I hope has come to terms with Obama’s victory by now. But that’s all beside the point. Sunset Man, at its best, has a real sunset feel; Otto’s singing in the title track is smoother than Rob Thomas will ever be. It’s still a pretty uneven record: the drunk-dialing song isn’t as funny as it thinks it is, and "When a Woman's Not Watching" (where wedding rings come off) could afford to dig deeper into the male psyche. “Ain’t Gonna Stop” is adequate surrogate B&R, “For You” an adequate ballad, “Just Got Started Lovin’ You” an adequate approximation of some Urban Cowboy-era post-Elvisoid like, say, Ronnie McDowell. But where Otto earns his yacht-rock stripes is the closer, "The Man That I Am,” which gets tough and seductive like Leon Russell to the tune of some sexy guitar drama.

Otto looks the part, too – pinstriped and world-weary on the hood of his desert-idling gas-guzzler on his album cover like it's just another tequila sunrise – which is sure more than you can say for Billy Currington. Previously known primarily as the himbo eye-candy swinging with Shania Twain in her 2004 “Party For Two” video, Billy is honestly not someone I ever expected great things from. But whaddaya know – his yacht blows Otto’s out of the water. Totally sinks his battleship.

Little Bit of Everything opens with a pure beach-music groove, acknowledged by a lyric that identifies holes in both Billy’s beach towel and the ozone layer, but it doesn’t matter because his girl just wants to get wet. Let the shagging begin! That’s “Swimmin’ in Sunshine”; “Everything,” a few tracks later, sounds even more Myrtle Beach, with a Caribbean shuffle seemingly built on the bassline of Lou Reed’s  “Walk on the Wild Side,” of all things. “I Shall Return” hitches a lilt out of Jimmy Buffett’s “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” to a concept loosely out of "California Girls” and any number of other princess-in-every-port classics (he tells those Mexican señoritas and Georgia peaches and cinnamon-skinned Miami girls don’t worry he’ll be back soon). And “Don’t” is a perfectly moody and reverberating facsimile of ‘70s country-soul, in the Joe South or Glen Campbell sense.

There’s some formulaic mush beyond that, of course -- but as terrifying as their titles suggest, even “No One Has Eyes Like You” is somewhat redeemed by taking chords from Smokey’s likewise eye-oriented “The Tracks of My Tears,” and the new-age sensitive-man malarkey of “Heal Me” is oddly growing on me too. And most of the album’s less-yacht-worthy moments work even better. The rote redneck revelations of “That’s How Country Boys Roll” (they like BBQ and fishing and Skoal and poppin’ a cold one … and, uh, Jesus Jones if you’re not listening close!) are boogied by a cooking Skynyrd (“Gimme Three Steps” to be exact) riff; there’s a clever Bobby Braddock number where an old philosopher in an Ohio bar tells Billy “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy”; and it’s somehow touching when, in “Every Reason Not to Go,” Billy tries to convince his gal not to move away to a city with a bad football team. And then there’s the inside-out existentialism of  “Life and Love and the Meaning Of,” the title chorus of which reads almost like a zen index entry. So overall … way to go, himbo! I hear Shania’s free for a boatride these days; ship ahoy, boy!