Album Review: Brandon Rhyder – Every Night

Every Night, the latest release from Brandon Rhyder, aspires to a greatness that it isn’t able to achieve. The Texas-based artist headed to Nashville to record the album and hopes to gain national recognition somewhere along the way, though he plans to continue running his operation from the Lone Star State. It’s a novel approach that runs counter to the typical Red Dirt defection strategy, but it remains to be seen whether or not it’ll work.

With Radney Foster at the helm, Every Night is decidely more polished than Rhyder’s previous efforts. Despite the polish, the production is one of the album’s strong suits and songs that are otherwise lackluster come to life with interesting arrangements and melodies.

“Have I Waited Too Long” is one of the first songs that Rhyder ever wrote and has appeared on a couple of his previous albums, but the latest reincarnation showcases Rhyder’s unique timbre and serves as a preview to the evolution of his sound. Unfortunately, Rhyder seems to have become as much a fan of his own voice as anyone and becomes overly reliant upon it to save songwriting that isn’t quite as graceful as his vocal.

Following up is “Fingers To The Bone,” an insanely catchy pseudo rocker that succumbs to melodrama and lamely wraps up by applying the hook universally. And coupled with Rhyder’s voice, melodrama isn’t a theme that works well. The grovelling protagonists in songs like “Again” and “She Couldn’t Lie Anymore” come across as spineless, and with lines like “It’s crazy how I let you jerk my chain/I’m nothing but your puppet on a string” and “But I sure love being her fool/I would have let her lie forever” it makes it hard to feel sympathetic towards their plights. From “Again” is another line that technically works but is all sorts of awkward; Rhyder writes, “You knew that I would fall for you/Like an eagle moving in for the kill.”

The ungainliness resurfaces in “Happy Ever After” with Rhyder singing, “You asked me a question, I gave you an answer.” And it continues in “Cowboy’s Work” as he sings, “He needs to be wild like the man that he is” and “Tonight when he lies down/He’ll fall fast asleep.” I digress, though. While the songwriting can be clumsy, it’s mostly competent despite its lack of substance. And though Rhyder contributed to every song on the album, it’s interesting to note that most of the awkwardness crops up on songs that he wrote on his own.

Rhyder corralled a well known group of individuals from Nashville to contribute to his fifth effort. Besides producing the album, Foster helped pen a couple of songs (”Let’s Don’t Go Down That Road” and “When You Wake Up”), Liz Rose co-writes a couple herself (”She Couldn’t Lie Anymore” and “This Ain’t It”), and Jon Randall, Foster, Sarah Buxton, and Georgia Middleman (among others) pitch in on background vocals.

Rhyder has the talent to put something great together, but he needs to work out the kinks present in the songwriting on this album before he’ll get to that point. Still, Every Night makes for a worthwhile listen, if only for Rhyder’s voice and the stylistic diversity that accentuates each song.