The Great American Bar Scene [2 LP]

by Zach Bryan

Overview

Unlike many of his country contemporaries in the 2020s, Zach Bryan embraces naked pretension. The opening track of The Great American Bar Scene bears a parenthetical distinguishing it as a "poem" which, in all practical purposes, means Bryan clearly enunciates every one of its lines in a deliberate recitation. None of the other 18 songs on The Great American Bar Scene are explicitly stamped as a poem, but they are poetic, plump with purple imagery and plaintive rhymes. Three studio albums into his major-label career -- a discography that also includes indie releases, non-LP singles, EPs, duets, and live albums -- Bryan's emphasis on the lyrics is now familiar. He makes some effort to open up his production to faint echoes of heartland rock and occasionally shoring up his meditations with a suggestion of a backbeat, a shifting in arrangements that help gives The Great American Bar Scene a more discernable shape than American Heartbreak or Zach Bryan. Cameos from a pair of rock superstars -- John Mayer sculpts "Better Days," Bruce Springsteen haunts the corridors of "Sandpaper" -- help pull Bryan's aspirations into focus. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Product Details

Release Date:	11/22/2024
Label:	Warner Records
UPC:	0093624839972
Rank:	319

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Zach Bryan   Primary Artist
Noeline Hofmann   Primary Artist
Bruce Springsteen   Featured Artist
John Mayer   Featured Artist
John Moreland   Featured Artist