It’s never overwrought or too on-the-nose. Zach Bryan’s Summertime Blues speaks directly to this moment in time. “I feel like a nuisance in my own damn mind,” he wails, before lamenting that “there’s got to be more to this than being pissed off all the time”. It all comes to a head with ‘All the Time’ and its lyrically serrated edge. Monstrously swampy story-song ‘Matt and Audie’ regales a tale of two ramblin’ souls always on the run (“I’d rather die a desperate man / than a man that got caught,” he admits). “I could die tonight,” he sings on the jangly ‘Us Then’. “This life ain’t worth living if the love that you’ve been given is taken before you are,” collaborator Charles Wesley Godwin exhales in his verse.īryan savors his life, as much as he weeps for its inevitable passing. His statement emerges as the backbone to the entire record, nestled between the cracks in his wistful performance of ‘Jamie’, a guitar-picked funeral song about a dead loved one. On this song, in particular, he shares how writing the song was his attempt to “capture the feeling of how fast it all moves, the intention of stepping back and taking a deep breath and realizing you have to enjoy it and enjoy every single second with the people you love.” “Everyday is so fleeting / and I have been trying to save it while I can,” he attests on ‘Motorcycle Drive By.’ His honesty is both revitalizing and devastating, fully encompassing the stretch between living and dying. With ‘Quittin’ Time,’ he cracks open his heart and spills its contents out for all to hear. “Oh, one day, it’ll be quittin’ time,” he snaps his jaws. “How close can a man come to God before dying / ‘Bout as close as you were when you were trying,” he allows.ĭespite a red-hot career, even Bryan grapples with intensifying pressure, a grueling tour schedule (as he notes in a Twitter thread on the album), and finding balance.
He takes a momentary breath before wrestling with what role his faith ultimately plays in his own demise. “I fear all my days of being young are done,” he whispers through flaky guitar chords. Time’s heavy hand rests on his shoulder, as you hear on ‘Twenty So’, a meditative exercise in seeking purpose in life, holding onto youth and learning how ephemeral existence really is. The world continues to spin, perhaps a bit cruelly. Birds chirp gleefully in the background, punctuating the notion that our singular miseries are ours and ours alone. Summertime Blues is mournful, probing and wonderfully sad “Gonna bury all my sorrow as the summertime passes by,” he deplores with striking resignation. With its tighter runtime and thematic arc, Bryan continues delivering songwriting excellence with the same bruised, raw, and emotionally-centered storytelling he’s quite quickly become loved for.Īn astute observer of the human condition, Bryan unloads his soul as though his very life depends on it. If his wide-spanning third album didn’t quite work for you, the nine-song release may be more your speed. On the heels of May’s 34-song major label debut, American Heartbreak, the singer-songwriter has surprised fans with a follow-up EP, Summertime Blues, in July. Zach Bryan may just be the most ambitious rising star in country music.
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