The king of bro country returns! Run!
Ok, hang on. Before the mockery begins, maybe some civil discussion is in order.
Does country music just suck?
Well, the question is flawed, because no one knows what country music even is anymore. Like the Supreme Court’s description of pornography, you just know it when you hear it. Although with the advent of hick hop and bro country—simply writing those two terms boils my bile—even that flimsy definition is beginning to fail.
But whatever it is, you either like it or you don’t.
However, there’s a huge difference between the crooning of Johnny Cash or Hank Williams and the tiresome tantrums of Gretchen Wilson or the … uh … whatever of Zac Brown. And while some of what Luke Bryan does on “Kill The Lights” is fairly typical of contemporary country music trends, he makes a few risky moves that are easy to imagine irking even the most devoted country fans.
But at what point does country devour southern rock, or vice versa?
Dear friends, it already has. There is little difference between what Lynrd Skynrd was doing decades ago and what these lowbrow capitalists are cranking out. Except that it was already done way better long ago. The effort to constantly breathe new life into this worn-out genre is resulting in the creation of stranger and stranger musical mutants.
We teach our children to poop in the potty. Like our children’s bowel movements, country music also has a home, and it’s Nashville. In good ol’ Nashvegas, people literally sit down on a daily basis and work hard not to create art but to write a no. 1 hit. These “artists,” unworthy of the moniker, are worshipers of neither Athena nor Apollo. Not Clio, nor Euterpe, nor Thalia, nor Melpomeni, nor Terpsichore, nor Erato, nor Polymnia, nor Ourania nor Calliope are patronized by this rabble.
These songwriters, with their perpetual game of musical “Go Fish,” kneel at the altar of Mammon. Woody Guthrie would spit in the eye of every one of them.
Parallel to the downward spiral of country music is the churning of the rap and hip-hop scenes. Both have a great deal of merit, both musically and socially, although it is admittedly difficult to weed through the bulk of it—materialistic, egocentric and violent—to find the good stuff. But to prevent this review from becoming a sociopolitical and ethnomusicological essay, that topic can be saved for another day.
So if you are the type who buys your high art at Target, by all means enjoy it. Pick up Luke Bryan’s “Kill The Lights” while you’re there. The author of “Drink A Beer,” “Drinkin’ Beer and Wastin’ Bullets,” “Beer in the Headlights,” and “Take My Drunk Ass Home” is sure not to disappoint, at least thematically.
“Kill The Lights”: a rocky ride
Even Keanu Reeves would have sung “Kick the Dust Up” with more passion and flair. It starts like a grotesque of a disco, with an oddly effect-processed banjo (just like grandpappy used to play) that is later treated enigmatically more like a sitar (just like grandpappy used to play). Imagine a brief but stomach-turning tour of about six or seven genres, slammed gracelessly into one song and then gangbanged by a lusty and lurid series of lyrical banalities. It’s worth a listen, if only for a good laugh.
The title track begins sounding like a cross between Queen and Michael Jackson. Not a bad start! Really, if Bryan could sing without sounding like a hillbilly, this song could potentially be listenable. And the lyric, “Kill The lights / Don’t it feel right / Until the sunrise” is great advice on saving energy. You can also turn your water heater down when not in use and install solar panels. Luke Bryan is both a poetic genius as well as an advocate of sustainable living.
“Strip it Down” is a daring attempt at being sexy. Image a brain-damaged Enrique Iglesias, and you’ve pretty much got the gist. Following is “Home Alone Tonight,” a duet with Little Big Town‘s Karen Fairchild about drinking oneself, “Shot for shot for shot” into oblivion. Blazing new territory there, eh Mr. Bryan? “A night we won’t regret,” eh? Later, there’s a song about waking up with a hangover (surprise!).
“Razor Blade,” featuring the lyric, “You want to see how far she’ll let you go,” is ready-made for any frat kid’s sociopathic and egomaniacal sexual fantasies. It’s almost a relief when “Fast” kicks in, which lies solidly in the center of contemporary country. That is to say that it sounds like watered-down southern rock, complete with the now-standard, out-of-place drum machine snippets. You’ve gotta admire a genre that can create its own clichés.
“Move” sounds more like The Strokes or The Killers (with the ubiquitous silly drawl, of course) than anything George Straight would have ever considered calling “country.” And George Straight is a gentleman, not a one-track-minded lecher. Who wants to hear Luke Bryan rap? No one? Ok, moving on.
In “Just Over,” Bryan wakes up with a hangover (surprise!) and continues drinking, like an untalented Jim Morrison. Then his girlfriend, who is perhaps tired of dealing with a perpetually adolescent alcoholic, breaks up with him (surprise again!).
The lyric, “I wanna get lost in your lipstick,” is unforgivably bad. It is a crime against English. Bring out the guillotines! Noam Chomsky should have the honor of letting loose the blade. Otherwise, this song is pleasantly mediocre: no malignant hip hop growths, no drum machines, and—wow—only one reference to alcohol! Despite the fact that the premise of the song is that sex with Luke Bryan will solve all of the subject’s problems, it’s a passable, middle-of-the-road love—er, lust—song.
By the time “Way Way Back” rolls in, however, the nonstop four-on-the-floor beat becomes difficult to spice up with MIDI percussion. Who ever thought dancing could be boring? At this point, it’s been a weary 30 minutes of slogging through this bizarre excuse for country music, and it’s unclear if “Way Way Back” is relatively pleasing because it’s so good or because it’s so forgettably yet comfortably unimaginative.
If you purchased “Kill The Lights” thinking that there would be country music on it somewhere, “To the Moon and Back” is sure to please. Ok, try to put aside the fact that Bryan’s accent makes him sound like his IQ is 75, tops. And it’s going to be difficult, but try to stop wincing every time he dishes out yet another soggy old maxim. Combine mixed meter and/or irregular phrase lengths with gentle picking, a steady and downplayed half-time train beat, and some nice pedal steel swells, and you’ve got yourself a song. You only have to tolerate ten duds to get to it.
Speaking of old chestnuts, “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day” is a steaming pile of them. Seriously? The only interesting part about this is the unsettling prominence of a phasey, flangey guitar, as if to suggest that Jimi Hendrix is now making his living by killing various woodland creatures. Hearing Bryan holler “Come on!” for the umpteenth time is just the cherry on top.
“Scarecrows” is a nostalgic song about his childhood on his dad’s peanut farm in Georgia. What is most remarkable is that in his childhood, Bryan seems to have lived every country music stereotype ever: poverty, dirt roads, underage drinking, heartbreak, automotive maintenance, boots, and farming.
This, too, shall pass
It’s both a great and a sad time for music. On one hand, it’s so easy in 2015 for a talented musician with a few bucks and some initiative to record and promote him or herself as compared to the past. On the other, when it comes to the mainstream, never has a nation’s gross national product been so gross. The American pop music scene is mostly an embarrassing wash of tired old bromides. So here’s Luke Bryan, doing something stylistically different in “Kill The Lights” but not necessarily any better. It sounds like someone chewed up, swallowed, and vomited the worst mainstream music has to offer. Even Alan Jackson’s recent tripe, “Angels and Alcohol” (click here to read my thoughts on that tragedy) comes off as refined and polished in comparison to this sticky and congealed mess of noises.
