When I first heard Zach Bryan’s music, I found myself transported to the spare bedroom in my grandma’s house, where I would often drift to sleep to the sound of bullfrogs outside the open window. I was little again, caught in the wistfulness of the wind, an effect Bryan knows how to elicit all too well.
I scrolled through Bryan’s discography to find that he trails traditional country roots. Most tracks in his fourth album “American Heartbreak” follow an upbeat, energetic theme that makes you want to have a barbeque and jam to the mixes of guitar, harmonica and banjo beneath the string lights in your grandma’s backyard. Even so, the acoustic guitar seems to be his favorite.
“American Heartbreak,” is primarily story-driven, encapsulating moments in time. Bryan sang of thought-provoking porch sits and belly laughs in the kitchen while simultaneously exploring the heaviness of heartbreak and struggling with forgiveness.
Bryan is not only “traditionally country” in sound in this album. Lyrically, he sings of cutting the grass and drinking a cold one, classic staples of country music.
When I listened to this album, the overall theme was obvious, but to my surprise, the last song in the album almost seemed hidden, yet it stuck out to me. In “This Road I Know,” Bryan thumbed gentle strings while speaking words into a mic in a poetic way. He integrated the background noise of the chatter around a dining room table, taking me to a place I’d never been.
I found this track to be out of place. It seemed to end the album on a random note, until the release of his self-titled album. “This Road I Know” only began a pattern that trailed into his latest release. I think he did this intentionally.
Most artists’ first solo projects are self-titled. Bryan broke this traditional mold by waiting until the release of his fourth studio album to self-title. I don’t know much about the music industry, but if this is considered a big “no-no” I admire Bryan for it. To me, it speaks that, as an artist, Bryan recognizes the value of remaining genuine rather than blindly following commercial trends. Whether out of rebellion or personal preference, his self-titled album is his most emotional and introspective release to date.
Country music is usually esteemed for specific instruments, which Bryan entertained in previous albums but defies in his self-titled one by leaning towards genres of folk and rock in songs featuring artists like Kacey Musgraves and The Lumineers.
He defies tradition narratively, too.
It’s like Bryan is laying down his harmonica and picking up a paintbrush, ready to paint images for the longings and losses in life no one wants to address. He is leaning away from singing about drinking whiskey and having the girl; instead, he voices a man alone with his guitar and a bleeding heart.
Pressing play on his self-titled album is like opening a book to find poems of raw emotions and unfiltered thoughts. Bryan forged insightfulness into these songs by stripping them back, focusing on acoustics and allowing the lyrics to come into the limelight.
Rejecting the overly romanticized, Bryan repeated a line in the first song, “Yeah, I think Fear and Friday’s got an awful lot in common. They’re overdone and glorified and they always leave you wantin’.”
The idea of longing threads through each track in this record, which churned the longing in me too.
The first track—“Fear and Friday’s (Poem)”—begins with the same tones the track of his previous album ended with. He communicates distaste for the ways of the world and notes that the true beauties of life lie in the free, simple things.
Internal struggles bleed from his fingertips as he strums through explorations of addiction, love and the pain of loss. He is on a lyrical highway, honest about his convictions and regrets until he needs a break: “Hey, driver, pull on over, I’m in a fight with God.”
Listening, I almost wanted to pull my earbuds out, pull over and take a break too.
Writing about ideals seems impersonal, but Bryan made it personal by revealing pieces of himself in the process. Bullfrogs trill in the background of the track “Smaller Acts,” a track about a girl who appreciates “things that are worthwhile” and how “grand things don’t impress her much.”
That’s the mystery of music artists: you never know what they actually mean. This song is about a girl. But how is Bryan any different in appreciating “things that are worthwhile” by waiting until his fourth album to name it after himself?
His self-titled album is honest and reflective of him as a person, something that is not always conveyed in an artist’s debut release.
The whole world is rushed.
Waiting is no small act.
