The Blighted Side of Life
Fresh off of re-recording his latest album acoustically to stave off whiners, Bryan can’t shake his doldrums on sparse new song
What’s the opposite of a feel-good hit of the summer? Well, just listen to Zach Bryan‘s latest song, “Pocket Change,” which just arrived in midwinter. In just under four minutes, the troubadour narrates the tale of a doomed couple surviving a meagre existence in a town that will never change, all orchestrated to an elegiac reel on his Gibson acoustic. Bryan left the song off his latest album, With Heaven on Top, which came out last week.
The man in the song is addicted to his ego, and Bryan describes the woman’s aroma several times: her breath “smells like cigarettes and sex and wine,” and he reminds us that “she still reeks like wine” in two choruses. “Just another drunk man with his white trash version of war,” Bryan sings. “Had a wife, had a life, had a baby on the way, then he lost it, ’cause the only change he’ll ever know sits in his front pocket.” The time of year isn’t clear from the lyrics, but there is a reference to New Year’s Day, which suggests the sun won’t be rising anytime soon for the couple, who still smell remarkably by the end of the ditty. It’s even darker in the video of him singing the song, which he ends by taking a puff of a cigarette (a smell he apparently knows well).
Bryan’s song might well be a preview of Bryan’s promised acoustic edition of the 25-song With Heaven on Top, which featured about two dozen musicians on it. “I’m assuming this record is just like all the other ones and there’s gonna be a billion people saying it’s over produced and shitty so I sat down in a room by myself and recorded all the songs acoustically so I didn’t have to hear everyone whine about more stuff,” he wrote on Instagram last week. “There’s mistakes and I didn’t redo any of them, but this’ll be out three days after With Heaven on Top drops tomorrow.”
Rolling Stone’s critic gave With Heaven on Top an average review, three-and-a-half stars out of five, when it came out earlier this year. “Listening to 25 songs of one man’s stuff is about 10 too many, but Bryan can keep our attention because he’s good at writing genuinely open-hearted lyrics rooted in the hope that we can read our own story in his — whether you’re feeling disconnected from home or trying to cut down on nights out or just troubled by what’s on your phone, a feeling he taps into on the album’s politically charged ‘Bad News,’” the review said.
