{"id":55275,"date":"2026-01-09T21:17:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T21:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/09\/zach-bryans-with-heaven-on-top\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T21:17:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T21:17:28","slug":"zach-bryans-with-heaven-on-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/09\/zach-bryans-with-heaven-on-top\/","title":{"rendered":"Zach Bryan’s ‘With Heaven On Top’"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tIn \u201cRunny Eggs,\u201d a song at the start of Zach Bryan<\/a>\u2019s new album, With Heaven on Top<\/em>, our boy is out there living his best life in a place where you might not expect to find him \u2014 not chilling on a bass boat in some lake down South or crushing IPAs in a dive bar in Philly, but running with the bulls in Spain. Accompanied by his acoustic guitar and harmonica, he folds the experience into a Hollywood-ready montage travelogue that takes him from a road trip to California (\u201cwhere the heartless are\u201d) to a big night out in Brooklyn to a Colorado show in the snow in front of 10,000 fans, from memories of his family to conversations with God. The metaphoric significance is gloriously right there for the picking \u2014 those Euro-bulls aren\u2019t too different from the ones they grow back home on the plains where he grew up. You can either ride \u2018em or dodge \u2018em or get run over. And isn\u2019t it a hell of a lucky break that Pamplona just happens to rhyme with Oklahoma, where Bryan grew up? \u201cBut no matter where I go, I pray to always find home,\u201d he assures himself. Sometimes this autobiographical cycle of life stuff really does almost write itself.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBeing a brilliantly prodigious songwriter with a knack for deep meaning (i.e., a top-notch bullshitter) has made Bryan one of this decade\u2019s runaway success stories. It wasn\u2019t all that many years ago he was an ex-Navy guy playing covers in a Potbelly. Today, he\u2019s a rock star and a passionately beloved poet of the people, filling stadiums<\/a> with fans who sing along to every word of his vividly detailed, hugely relatable evocations of mistake-making and regret-stockpiling your way toward figuring out where you fit in the epic story of wet hot American heartbreak. His last LP, the 19-song The Great American Bar Scene<\/em><\/a>, was a sweeping statement that felt like a culmination, led by a stunning single, \u201cPink Skies,\u201d about packing up a childhood home while grieving a death and accepting the reality of impending adulthood even if your own wayward days are hardly a done deal.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBryan didn\u2019t release a new album in 2025. Sitting down with Bruce Springsteen<\/a> in an interview for Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s Musicians on Musicians series, he told his songwriting hero, \u201cIt just feels like I put so much music out, people have read into it so much; but in reality, I was just writing music, and now I gotta slow down and home in.\u201d In terms of real life, the 29-yard-old troubadour\u2019s journey has continued at warp speed; in 2024, he went through a messy public breakup<\/a>, then ended 2025 by getting sober <\/a>and getting married. <\/a>In terms of musically honing in? Mission accomplished. With Heaven on Top<\/em> is a 25-song splurge \u2014 from high-protein Americana rock like \u201cSante Fe,\u201d to fragile indie-folk poetry like \u201cCannonball,\u201d from Mumford & Sons stomp to arty National-style horns and strings. He references an old Elliott Smith classic on \u201cAnyways,\u201d kicks an Elvis Presley impression on \u201cRivers and Creeks,\u201d and taps some of Tyler Childers\u2019 rural working-class angst on \u201cAlways Willin\u2019.\u201d It\u2019s his most considered and accomplished album yet, so much so that he\u2019s already preempted complaints that it\u2019s \u201coverproduced\u201d by releasing an acoustic version.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEmotionally, Bryan is as raw as ever. \u201cSkin\u201d is an almost troublingly visceral breakup song, while the Tom Petty-steeped \u201cSlicked Back\u201d pays tribute to the grounding influence of his new wife (\u201cused to know some folks who put it all online but you paint landscapes in the evening time\u201d). \u201cDeAnn\u2019s Denim,\u201d which adds to a canon of songs he\u2019s written involving his late mother, intensely reckons with the good and bad side of generational inheritance. And if anyone is worried that Bryan has eased too smoothly into the pampered celeb lifestyle without a sense of alienation and guilt, spoiler: He\u2019s kinda alienated and guilty. \u201cSaying goodbye to who I used to be,\u201d he sings, literally flying away from the flyover states on \u201cAeroplane.\u201d On \u201cMiles\u201d he trashes his ex\u2019s fancy friends then gets into the bummer of how it goes when you make a living turning your experiences into an exploitable commodity: \u201cThey\u2019ve got miles of me on their radio.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tMany songs lock into the more universal struggle of his recent decision to quit drinking. The fragilely pretty \u201cSay Why\u201d cleverly spins the image of giving in and buying a 40 ounce at an Ohio truck stop into a reckoning of Biblical proportion (he literally <\/em>figuratively carries his cross to the bar). The sturdy soulful \u201cAppetite\u201d opines, \u201cEveryone I know got older, told my drunk ass to get sober.\u201d In that song he\u2019s a musician cynically grinding through a podunk tour, \u201cin Northwest Arkansas?\/Playing shows to those who don\u2019t care at all,\u201d offering a nightmare scenario of what might befall an artist if their indulgences outstrip their dreams and goals.<\/p>\n

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