Music Review: Dierks Bentley's 'Broken Branches' offers safe, familiar, cold beer country

Nashville hitmaker Dierks Bentley has delivered his 11th workplace album, “Broken Branches.”

Nashville hitmaker Dierks Bentley has delivered “Broken Branches,” his eleventh workplace medium that leans into immoderate well-tread state stone territory, the benignant that invariably involves breached hearts, trucks and a acold beer.

Look, Bentley knows what he’s doing. The medium is 11-tracks of catchy, country rock vigor filler and there’s not overmuch enigma to its philharmonic roadmap. But therein lies his calling card: Dependable songs with fewer unsmooth edges.

Thematically, galore of the tracks connected the superstar’s latest effort hint astatine interior struggles, but let Bentley and the listener to flight them unscathed. “Jesus Loves Me” is an admirable acoustic dilatory pain astir uncovering religion but losing a woman. “Thought possibly if I deed my knees / She’d deliberation astir hitting the brakes,” Bentley sings. There is flimsy salvation for the Phoenix-born singer: “Yeah, Jesus loves maine / But she don't.”

On the rubric track, the jukebox stomp “Broken Branches,” Bentley gets a bully assistance from chap state hitmakers John Anderson and Riley Green. Ostensibly it’s an energetic drinking opus astir household lines, but lyrics similar “We shoulda gone to assemblage / Coulda gained a small knowledge,” which propulsion from a fashionable puerility rhyme, consciousness similar they're underperforming.

What Bentley does highly good is execute what his — and the modern genre’s — biggest fans mightiness expect. Tales of a pugnacious exterior with a warm, if fragile, bosom underneath. But his acquainted is derivative.

Palatable state is however you get connected the vigor and enactment connected it. Songs astir brew and trucks are Spotify deliverables. If you similar your state artists with a longer rap sheet, you’ll request to look further than “Broken Branches.” Even the fewer attempts astatine invention don't wholly land, similar the rowdy, rocking “She Hates Me,” which includes a astonishing interpolation of post-grunge set Puddle of Mudd’s 2001 deed “She (Expletive) Hates Me.”

If there’s a pleasant find here, it’s Stephen Wilson Jr. duetting with Bentley connected the opening track, “Cold Beer Can.” It’s the astir memorable opus connected the medium — with its plucky instrumentation and ascendant chorus, which showcase Wilson Jr.’s affluent dependable and guitar talents.

It besides does what Bentley aims for, but misses, passim the record: It addresses life's touching moments implicit brews.

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