“Lies,” Bryan’s duet with Lana Del Rey, does not. It’s a song about the self-doubt that inevitably creeps into the most stable relationships, the way you wonder if the euphoria or contentment you feel in a marriage is matched. They share the situation: Del Rey recently celebrated her second wedding anniversary, while Bryan is nearing his first. But, unlike Felker and Bryan, the two don’t share a language or approach. Bryan’s songs are such mirrors of his life that it often feels like he simply nails pages from his journal to a wall and scribbles a few chords above the lines he likes; Del Rey’s songs, though, are full of funhouse mirrors, refracting and reordering the truth into deeply considered designs. “Lies” is his clumsiest and dullest writing here, as if he’s invited an afterwork friend to a work party and is trying to explain everyone else’s jargon, only to end up quoting Fleetwood Mac. It is Young Manhood’s one blunder—but perhaps an instructive one, as Del Rey maybe completes her own ballyhooed country album.
Through his 20s, Bryan earned a reputation as a troll and asshole, going a little too hard with online clapbacks or trying and failing to turn uncomfortable encounters with fans into jokes. But he’s been funneling that antagonistic energy into more productive places lately, whether lambasting the way the stooges of ICE break up families or daring Robert Kraft to say something by sporting a Free Palestine shirt at Gillette Stadium while breaking yet another attendance record. “Robot Killed the Working Man” isn’t a political song, per se, but it is a harsh rebuke of unchecked capitalism, or of the way technological progress rips the blue collar right off a legion of workers. (Bryan’s choice to sample a speech by Dusty Rhodes, the born-to-love wrestler nicknamed “The American Dream,” is a masterstroke because Rhodes’ nemesis, Ric Flair, was a pompous blowhard, dubbed “The Dirtiest Player in the Game.” You pull for Rhodes.) The song crackles like a Drive-By Truckers protest number, while the closing “You’ll Get By” is Bryan’s gorgeous answer to “Outfit,” the Truckers’ frank distillation of life advice and perhaps the best song a young Jason Isbell wrote in that band. Bryan echoing the Truckers is very good news, since their own rambunctious salad days eventually yielded some of this century’s best American anthems. Maybe Bryan can get there, too.
In a recent rare interview with chum Matthew McConaughey, Bryan suggested that his songwriting-and-touring tear since leaving the Navy may be coming to a close soon. He wants to start a family, see his sister do stand-up gigs, go on more adventures that don’t require standing on a stage himself. He has, of course, worked hard enough to deserve a break, but I also hope it doesn’t last very long. In the last seven years, Bryan’s struggle to become a better person has paralleled his quest to become a good songwriter. Maybe, it seems, he’s getting close on both counts? During “Dog Days,” a Springsteen-shaped tantrum about silver spoons and self-actualization, Bryan repeats “I ain’t a boy, darling/I’m all the way grown.” The first time he hits the line, he mutters it, swallowing the last word like it’s a boast he worries is a lie; the fifth and final time he sings it, though, he shouts it, nearly out of breath, almost too excited by this real news to deliver it. I want to hear about where Bryan goes from here—in songs that are finally starting to match his popular stature.
