Say Why too, although I like this one. I agree he’s doing an every other song thing (so far), but seems afraid of making the bigger songs sound too big. My man you are one of the biggest artists making music, we know you have the production value to make these songs sound big.
It's a Zach Bryan record so there was always going to be fat to trim, but Slicked Back through Plastic Cigarette really kinda drug the record to a halt to me once I picked it back up. The alternating ended, too.
Dude desperately needs someone in his life who will explain to him when a song sounds exactly the same as 8 other songs.
I don't know if I turned a corner on this guy, or if we just hit the saturation point, but I'm five tracks in, and if you told me I'd heard all these songs on his previous three albums, I would believe you.
Didn’t really listen to him until Bar Scene and haven’t gone back to older stuff so I don’t have the same complaints here about sameness but at least through Dry Deserts, I think this is phenomenal
"South and Pine" is terrific, and feels like it has a more deliberate/different melody. A lot of the time, I feel like he wrote some lyrics and then sat down with a guitar and sang them over the same chords/melodic structure he reverts to all the time. This one doesn't sound like that, and it sticks out positively as a result.
I've only gotten thru the first handful of songs, but I love the old school sounding horns on some of the songs was not expecting that at all
dry deserts is a great song. on bad news at the moment, everything is pleasant enough. he's probably always gonna be an 'everything is good, but im just coming to a select handful of songs' guy for me and this is delivering on that front so far
Decent album, definitely bloated. Probably a good 12-14 song track list in here. He’s also a summer guy to me so releasing it in January is weird.
I got through about 17-18 songs. A few highlights like Bad News and just as many songs that sound rehashed and uninspired. Another 25 song collection that could be a good "album" if someone could get him to leave bad ideas on the hard drive. It's so frustrating on the songs when he finally changes his "formula" but the production is so muddy that it holds them back.
for personal reasons, it feels very good to have a new ZB album i can hopefully completely latch onto after having some very annoying memories directly associated with basically every song on Bar Scenes.
As I feared, losing the features was a problem. Those songs added texture and variety to the last two albums, and not having them this time makes this drag more than it should. His refusal to switch up the formula/production style doesn't help, nor does his very limited vocal range and his tendency to fall into the same melodies over and over again.