Brian Burns is a competent, if hardly distinctive, country singer. Same goes for the playing on this record. So it might take a couple or three listens to realize that this is one of the finest collections of country songs of the last year or so.
It’s not that Burns doesn’t occasionally dip into country cliches: “If You Don’t Believe I Love You (Ask My Wife)” is no deeper than its jokey title, “Whiskey-O” is one in a long line of songs celebrating boozing, and the title track treads as familiar a ground as you’d guess from its name. Even on these songs, though, Burns can turn a poignant or hilarious phrase with ease: “Now there’s Jesus on a billboard sign tellin’ me my time has come/Is it heaven he’s pointin’ toward, or Highway 81?” he asks in the title song. And on “Whiskey-O”, Burns cracks: “I don’t mumble and stumble around/I stand proud and tall till I hit the ground/I’m not a wino, I’m a whiskey-o.”
More typical, though, is the genuine originality found in the likes of “Lucy & Desi”, a funny, sweet love song set to a pseudo-Latin lounge rhythm; “Montgomery Street”, a moving exploration of the perils of trying to go home again; and “Commerce & Pearl”, a celebration of Burns’ favorite Dallas honky-tonk. These songs are packed with detail but never come across as too wordy.
This record ends with “The Haunted Jukebox”, a ghostly celebration of country singers past. Again, this sort of thing has been done before, but rarely with the kind of details Burns musters: “I could smell the whiskey on Hank’s breath, and Patsy Cline’s perfume, all around the haunted jukebox at the Lost Highway Saloon,” he sings.
At his best, Burns’ songs would fit right in on that jukebox.