If you’re anything like me, then you believe there’s something to be said for any artist who refuses to explain themselves. In a time when you can go look up the meaning of a song or obsessively delve into a singer’s personal life to decode any messaging in a new song, it’s rather refreshing to be faced with an artist who implores you to do the opposite. Zach Bryan does not write his music for our enjoyment or to make money, he writes his music for himself. In fact, Bryan removed the eponymous track from his sophomore album, “Elizabeth,” citing that it was too personal of a song to be public. In his new album, “Zach Bryan,” the new country master continues to up the ante on his developing phenomena but keeps the intimate confessional atmosphere we love so much about him.
“Zach Bryan” follows in the footsteps of 2022’s “American Heartbreak,” an epic, yearning masterpiece of American songwriting, and it has big shoes to fill. “American Heartbreak” was an instant phenomenon and brought fame to an artist that was mostly obscure.
Not to mention that it is two hours long and has 34 songs. Quite a feat, and quite an act to follow, though Bryan, seemingly undaunted, gave us a self-titled album that exceeds the heights of “American Heartbreak” bringing both excitement and tears to the eyes of his fans. In a little less than half the time of its predecessor, “Zach Bryan” absorbs you, devastates you, excites you, then drops you off in a completely different place than you were when you started it. What follows after that poem, is 15 bracingly vulnerable songs that bear intimate confessions of romance, despair and philosophical revolution.
There really is something for everyone in “Zach Bryan” and if that’s not quite true then there’s something for every mood. The bombastic explosions of country rock that come out of songs like “Overtime,” “Fear and Fridays” and of my personal favorites, “The East Side of Sorrow,” which provides a much needed energy and thudding heart to a collection of songs that are pretty melancholy. On that melancholic side of things lies acoustic confessionals like “Summertime’s Close,” a romantic elegy that invokes the likes
of Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan. “Jake’s Piano (Long Island)” stands out the most among the more depressing batch of ballads that make up the album, with its heartfelt piano melody and ultra specific lyrics, you may not understand exactly what Bryan is talking about, but he gives a complete understanding of how he feels.
With every Bryan song comes a story and that story is incredibly his own, the fact that he uses his amazing way with words to tell those stories is a privilege for us. I’m so grateful that this new album gave us that privilege. It’s in these stories that we can find revelations that are important to us, be it about hope in the face of grief, in East Side of Sorrow finding solace in another person in “Summertime’s Close” or existential exhaustion in “Hey Driver.” Whether you like country or not, “Zach Bryan” is an album of deep humanity, pain and romance with emotions, expressions and tunes that we can all find a part of ourselves in.
