Zac Brown Band – The Comeback (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Zac Brown Band – The Comeback (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:56 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Home Grown Music – Warner Music Nashville

Zac Brown Band have announced plans for a new album due this fall. Titled The Comeback, the group’s upcoming full-length studio project will be released October 15th via Warner Music Nashville and Brown’s Home Grown Music.

The 15-track release includes the band’s current single “Same Boat,” which came out in June and urges people to embrace coexistence. Brown had a hand in writing every song on The Comeback, working with frequent collaborators like Ben Simonetti and Wyatt Durrette as well as Luke Combs, Jonathan Singleton, and the Cadillac Three’s Neil Mason. Singer-guitarist Marcus King appears on the previously released song “Stubborn Pride,” and jazz-soul vocalist Gregory Porter guests on “Closer to Heaven.”

“The Comeback celebrates our collective resilience as a community,” said Brown in a statement. “This music is about standing together and rediscovering our roots and what makes us human.”

Earnest, modest and not afraid to crack a dad joke, Zac Brown is country music’s version of a guy you would ask for help with a flat tire. That everyman approachability and love of a platitude (on this, his seventh major-label album, he drops “If you can’t be nice, don’t say nothin’ at all” and “There’s only so many trips around the sun”) has made him a star. With The Comeback, he ticks a lot of boxes on the country-music lyric checklist—fishing, screen doors, pickup trucks, John Deere, a pawn-shop guitar—but there are stylistic surprises, too. It all kicks off with “Slow Burn,” an ode to nostalgia for young love that is so big and arena-ready it could be a Kings of Leon track, complete with a sky-cracks-open choir’s “ohhhhhh” opening. The chorus of “Us Against the World” is almost as big, both setting Brown up for exciting awards show or concert performance moments. Fiery Southern rocker “GA Clay,” meanwhile, sounds like it’s tailormade for a pick-up commercial, but adds in massive backing vocals that recall Merry Clayton’s “Gimme Shelter” wail. There’s a Mellencamp stomp and guitar jangle to the title song, which doubles down on the clichés with a guest appearance by the ghosts of 2020: “There’s a thousand empty classrooms, broken glass in the streets/ Old Glory hanging on houses we’re not supposed to leave/ It may feel like Lady Liberty’s down on her luck/ When you hit rock bottom the only way is up.” Brown also indulges in a bit of ’80s FM country: There’s a Ronnie Milsap spirit to the irresistible, organ-tinged “Old Love Song,” and the great chorus of “Don’t Let Your Heart” rocks an Alabama x Bob Seger (that rolling piano!) vibe. The bands dives into Hee Haw humor with “Fun Having Fun,” a bluegrass novelty that piles on cartoony police sirens and “tough guy” voices for dads and cops, as Brown celebrates being a firebug, wrecking his granddaddy’s truck and hotboxing while doing 95mph. “Paradise Lost on Me” is his easy-breezy ballad that belies its heartbreak-at-the-beach lyrics. “Wild Palomino” comes on like campfire sing-along and delivers two all-American country declarations: “As long as god’s still in church and hard work still works and this collar on my shirt’s still blue/ I’ll never stop loving you” and “Whiskey’s a Band-Aid that just leaves more scars.” Jazz singer Gregory Porter serves up a soulful guest turn on “Closer to Heaven,” while, on “Stubborn Pride,” blues rocker Marcus King’s gravelly rasp underscores the honey smoothness of Brown’s own voice. And sometimes, it pays not to reinvent. Catchy “Same Boat” sounds a lot like Brown’s first hit “Chicken Fried,” weaving in fiddle, jug-band bass and a knee-slappin’ bridge. “We’re all in the same boat/ Fishing in the same hole,” Brown sings, simplifying America’s ideological divide to the point that you can only laugh when an Andy Griffith-style whistle kicks in. It’s already a hit. – Shelly Ridenour

Tracklist:
1-01. Zac Brown Band – Slow Burn (03:31)
1-02. Zac Brown Band – Out in the Middle (02:46)
1-03. Zac Brown Band – Wild Palomino (03:18)
1-04. Zac Brown Band – Us Against the World (03:12)
1-05. Zac Brown Band – Same Boat (03:10)
1-06. Zac Brown Band – Stubborn Pride (feat. Marcus King) (07:08)
1-07. Zac Brown Band – Fun Having Fun (03:40)
1-08. Zac Brown Band – The Comeback (03:19)
1-09. Zac Brown Band – Old Love Song (03:31)
1-10. Zac Brown Band – Any Day Now (03:13)
1-11. Zac Brown Band – Paradise Lost on Me (02:24)
1-12. Zac Brown Band – GA Clay (03:42)
1-13. Zac Brown Band – Love and Sunsets (03:40)
1-14. Zac Brown Band – Closer to Heaven (feat. Gregory Porter) (03:58)
1-15. Zac Brown Band – Don’t Let Your Heart (03:18)

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