Track Review: Dierks Bentley (Feat. Kacey Musgraves), “Bourbon in Kentucky”

Updated:

September 6, 2013 11:00 am

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Dierks Bentley
“Bourbon in Kentucky”
Rating: 4 Stars (out of 5)

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Nashville’s Dierks Bentley, on the surface, fits in pretty snugly with most contemporary country. His voice is a twangy, deep baritone, with the masculine tones necessary to sell a tender ballad without losing any grit. And his newest single, “Bourbon in Kentucky,” concerns a pretty familiar country trope: Drinking the pain away (or at least trying… if not succeeding). “There ain’t enough bourbon in Kentucky to make me forget you,” Bentley sings, only highlighting how futile his attempts are. But on a purely musical level, “Bourbon in Kentucky” is basically a big, heroic rock song, and a damn good one at that. It opens with a distorted mist that’s probably the closest mainstream country has ever come to shoegaze, and soon erupts into the kind of earnest stadium fare that’s served U2 so well over the years. There may be tears in Bentley’s booze, but he’s got rock music in his soul.