Luke Bryan: Crash My Party

luke bryan
Luke Bryan
Crash My Party  
(Capitol Nashville)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Videos by American Songwriter

After winning the coveted CMA Entertainer of the Year award, with the help of his hugely successful Tailgates & Tanlines, Luke Bryan now finds himself in the unenviable, but inevitable position of having to follow up its chart longevity.

Armed with its hit title track, Bryan’s latest offering, Crash My Party, is fraught with catchy hooks and strong melodies, but it’s often sidetracked by reductive and forgettable lyrics (“Out where the corn rows grow/Row, row my boat/Floatin’ down the Flint River/Catch us up a little catfish dinner”). Ironically, the set’s most disposable track (“I See You”) was co-written by Bryan himself, yet he later manages to redeem his musical faux pas with the reflective life ballad “Dirt Road Diary.”

While you’d have to hunt high and low for any real substance here (“Blood Brothers”), that shouldn’t matter since Bryan’s fourth proper album is exactly the sort of good time romp for which the Georgia native has become famous; country booty shakers (“That’s My Kind of Night” and “Out Like That”) balanced with emotive balladeering (“Goodbye Girl” and “Play It Again”). However, listeners should be forewarned, this album is predictably programmed for obstreperous fist-pumping, beer chugging followers of feel good country pop who don’t want to waste a lot of time contemplating the deeper meaning of life. Ultimately, Crash My Party is melodiously rewarding despite its sporadic lyrical missteps.

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