Consumer Guide Album

Zach Bryan: Zach Bryan [Warner, 2023]
Even before the Navy proffered an honorable discharge so this 25--year-old Okie veteran with eight years of service behind him so he could finally make music fulltime, he'd racked up 2019's solo acoustic DeAnn, 2020's solo acoustic Elisabeth, and the 2022 Warner debut American Heartbreak, which won him a CMA best "new" artist plaudit and is dwarfed by this follow-up, which never falters for 16 tracks. I mean it--not a duff track anywhere from a seaman who stakes his claiml with spoken poesy reporting that "I've taken my motorbike down the Pacific 101 and I have stood atop of the Empire State Building with my father." After which it's distinct tune after distinct tune whether he's hitchhiking through clonopin failure, craving love that survives daylight, finding God in her Holy Roller eyes, reaching out to a gal whose father has had it with Long Island, offering an eastern Montana gal a tourniquet, reaching out from his '88 Ford to a third gal whose mama pawned her wedding ring. He never comes out on the other other side of a song without having marked it with a detail no one's ever thought of before. A