It’s not high art, but what Zac Brown Band fan is looking for anything deeper than, “My old car needs washing and the front yard needs a trim”?
On “You Get What You Give,” the anticipated follow-up to 2008’s multi-platinum breakthrough “The Foundation,” ZBB further demonstrates the key to its 13-years-in-the-making success: an amalgamation of an everyman approach – a hallmark of country music – and savvy musicianship.
And, thankfully, a lack of interest in trying to conjure another song as tiredly hokey as the band’s first smash, “Chicken Fried.”
Brown, a native of Dahlonega, embodies the carefree country mentality and even employs the fiddles and pedal steel guitar to appease the purists. But he’s also a student of the breezy singalongs popularized by pal Jimmy Buffett (who appears here on the reggae-dusted ball of fluff, “Knee Deep”) and the Southern-rock jam traditions of The Allman Brothers Band.
It’s also easy to see why ZBB and the Dave Matthews Band are kindred spirits (the latter invited Brown and Co. to open a handful of shows this summer). The old-fashioned hoedown “Whiskey’s Gone,” with its rapid-fire lyrics straight out of Matthews’ playbook, and the 10-minutes-long “Who Knows,” which gleefully thumbs its nose at radio with a protracted display of instrumental prowess, would both fit just as comfortably in DMB’s eclectic canon.
The six guys in ZBB, which now includes Georgia singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Clay Cook, are at their sharpest on the snappy party songs that sound effortless. So while you respect Brown’s urge to delve into pensiveness (“No Hurry,” “Martin”), most of the time you’re merely listening patiently to the ballads, waiting for the fist-pumpers to kick in again.
The exception being the gorgeous “Colder Weather,” which floats under a beautiful piano melody and Brown’s versatile voice, which often sounds uncannily like James Taylor's.
While nothing on “You Get What You Give,” available Tuesday, is revolutionary, the album is a well-developed collection of 14 songs with some high-end harmonizing (“Quiet Your Mind”), a little tropical boogie (“Settle Me Down”) and not a “Chicken Fried” among the batch.
