An unwitting, almost accidental country-music superstar, 28-year-old Zach Bryan spent nearly a decade in the Navy, where he outfitted aircraft with munitions by day and wrote confessional songs at night, until earning an honorable discharge to work on music full time. His prolificacy and gift for songwriting — which cuts through the bluster you might expect from a flaxen-haired, clean-shaven professional handler of explosives — would award him star status without having to navigate the protracted courtship of venues, label execs, and producers it tends to take to make a household name out of a sentimental acoustic-guitar darling. But Bryan also occupies the curious space of reliable chart and amphitheater draw you rarely encounter on country radio. That this feel-good independent success story remains a relative persona non grata around the stations dedicated to playing music like his gives the lie to the notion that radio is chiefly a business of promoting the music most people want to hear. A sense that his very existence is a point of controversy keeps Bryan distant and silent, speaking most poignantly through songs but only sporadically about them. It’s been 11 months since his last proper interview, a Joe Rogan Experience appearance that drew his chad-mystic sensibilities into sharp relief while teasing out how conflict averse the singer who has made news for tiffs with police and other artists wishes he could be. The rollout for The Great American Bar Scene, his fifth album, feels like a referendum on the issue. Largely a celebration of the dive-bar reverie great drinking songs are born from, Bar Scene struck a sour note when “Pink Skies,†a delicate remembrance of Bryan’s mother’s funeral, was submitted to pop radio in May, presumably by his label. “I’m not a fucking Pop artist, or country artist leave me out of this,†he tweeted and later deleted.
On record, Bryan’s slipperiness offers a distinct tactical advantage. Country and pop are inarguably present. Alt-country aficionados in need of a Whiskeytown substitution get another fast-acting songwriting savant who understands how to push a tender duet into that vaunted Emmylou-and-Gram space. “Purple Gas,†from Bar Scene, employs Alberta singer Noeline Hofmann’s high-lonesome exhalations to sweeten resolute verses: “Was taught to not throw the first fist / But if you take a hit, finish that son of a bitch.†Moments later, the contented “Boons†extolls simple pleasures between warbling choruses, which lean into the love of catchy folk-pop telegraphed by the Lumineers spot on last year’s Zach Bryan and the Mumford & Sons’ live video still lurking in an old “My Songs†playlist on Bryan’s YouTube page. Working its way through the rousing heartland rock of Bruce Springsteen and the slick blues rock of John Mayer (with both men appearing as guest features), Bar Scene bursts with possibilities familiar to fans of the last two albums, threatening at any minute to veer into the ruddy earnestness of Ed Sheeran or hang the opposite turn, adopting the playful classicism of a Brad Paisley.
A machinelike efficacy suggests Zach Bryan could stick with this balance forever, gesturing to a few different singer-songwriter traditions while carefully avoiding abject schmaltz, blessing Barstool bros with beautiful odes to love and grief while maintaining a twisting, unpredictable, purportedly apolitical public persona. Bryan embodies a demographic conservative media has gone to embarrassing lengths to try to boost: He’s a patriot angling, as the introductory poem “Lucky Enough†advises, to “have some kids and teach them that we are all the same†but who otherwise looks down on people who make politics a personality. He could be a prince in anti-woke circles, but he won’t commit to the hate. He incurred right-wing outrage last year speaking on behalf of his queer sister’s transitioning partner: “I just think insulting transgender people is completely wrong because we live in a country where we can all just be who we want to be.†The sense that he’s not beholden to anyone’s agenda meets a landscape hungry for bucking broncos; the music pines for a simpler world where men live and die on the merits of their actions and not the vast and ephemeral shrouds of public opinion and internet sentiment augmenting every calculus now.
The gut-wrenching pathos of a Zach Bryan verse is never more obvious than in a handful of lines near the end of Bar Scene’s “The Way Back,†a song about broadcasting love and positivity to a friend weathering a rough patch, a web of metaphors of brotherly resilience woven in lieu of a simple “I love youâ€: “Baseball in the fall with a worn glove / The leaves might change, but the roots stuck / Them shoes still hang on the top wire / I’d say ‘I don’t miss you,’ but I hate a liar.†It’s the poetry of a punch in the arm. “Mechanical Bull†speaks to the ineffable feeling that culture is growing digitized and unfeeling, turning a reflection on coin-operated bar rides into a rejoinder to the sentiment Jason Isbell floated through Jackson Maine in A Star Is Born’s “Maybe It’s Time.†Where his elder posited putting the past to rest and moving on, Bryan’s “Bull†suggests keeping history alive in our memories: “Are the old ways dead or livin’ in my head?†Chasing the glory of Springsteen’s Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. across “Oak Island,†“American Nights,†and the title track — the latter of which actually name-checks the Boss — Bryan casts himself as a descendant to the New Jersey icon’s aching tales of broken American dreams in the same way the early E Street Band albums drew unsubtle Bob Dylan comparisons.
It’s here that the limits of Bryan’s purview show up. “American Nights†surveys the decaying prospects of a group of dock workers, veterans, and gamblers, gleaning from their struggle that it sure is nice to shake all that stress off at the beach. “Oak Island†sniffs around the same intersections of family obligation and rule of law as Nebraska’s “State Trooper†and “Highway Patrolman.†Bryan’s protagonist learns that a brother turned to crime and tracks him down to deliver “a lickin’ only blood could give him.†“Trooper†and “Patrolman†both ponder the needs and unbreakable that which can set a person at odds with the law, but “Oak Island†instead cruises interminably toward fraternal fisticuffs like Tom Hardy avenging the pain of a broken home in the 2011 boxing flick Warrior. A reticence to connect the dots and ask why these characters are suffering softens Bar Scene tracks speaking to the state of the nation. Imagine Bruce Hornsby and the Range’s bleak “The Way It Is†hook served without the emboldening “Aw, but don’t you believe them.â€
Duetting with literal Bruce Springsteen on Bar Scene’s “Sandpaper,†Bryan proves prepared for the encounter songs like the self-titled’s boisterous “Overtime†and “Tourniquet†seemed to beg for. A godson to the fey, wounded “Secret Garden,†“Sandpaper†muses about a woman similarly nestled in the crevices of Bryan’s mind: “You ain’t outta my league, you’re outta this planet / But dammit if you ain’t drilled into my skull.†He’s a wrecking ball, a kaiju, a blunt force careening straight to the point and not prone to sudden shifts in direction. You know where he’s going to land when you see him on the horizon. Even so, some turn of phrase or another is destined to knock you down. His production, approaches to genre, and line deliveries are no longer surprising yet no less potent. The back-and-forth in “Purple Gas†resembles Zach Bryan’s “Holy Roller,†and the workaday resolve of “Boons†mirrors that album’s “Tradesman.†But you wonder whether the qualities that once made him a refreshing alternative to mainstream pop-country will wear after a few more scoops of shaggy not-quite-country-rock and almost-folk-pop. Like the brother expressing that he doesn’t need to be saved from the “Oak Island†gang with a cold “I love you… but I found out that I’m them,†Bryan, once an outsider, is a lucrative business of his own with set-in habits and expectations. As big-ticket follow-ups go, Bar Scene is Bryan’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, or The Eminem Show: the formula remains productive but predictable. It could be a bit more refined; it could go a lot worse. Which way, (mid)Western man?