Album Review: Brantley Gilbert - Just As I Am

Artist: Brantley Gilbert
Release Date: May 2014
Label: Valory Music Group
Producer: Dan Huff

Kitch's Rating: 9.5/10

Straight off the top, Brantley Gilbert's Just As I Am is my favourite release so far in 2014. I love every single song, and that's rare for me. I've been waiting for this one to drop ever since the lead single "Bottoms Up" was released in December. That song quickly rocketed to the top of the Country Charts and cracked the Top 20 on the Billboard 200, and set the tone for Gilbert's second major-label album.

If you're from Georgia right now, chances are you're making waves. Jason Aldean was recently named the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year, and outlaw Eric Church's new album, The Outsiders, has made significant waves in Nashville, for it's impressive array of music styles. Now, it's Gilbert's turn, and Just As I Am appears poised to be his biggest seller yet.

Yes, Gilbert is by name a country artist, but he is far removed from most of the rest of the artists who call Nashville home. Gilbert’s music leans more towards southern rock than traditional country, as is easily and quickly discerned by listening to songs like "Kick it in the Sticks" (where he name-checks AC/DC and shows off guitar riffs that would make Angus and Malcolm Young might proud) and his big radio hit, the anthemic "Country Must Be Country Wide" from his major label debut, Halfway to Heaven. Think Jason Aldean with less slide guitars and more growling. Them Georgia boys is showing them how it's done, y'all!

Just As I Am blasts off with outlw intent, and you quickly realise that this album, stylistically, picks up where Halfway to Heaven finished. And why not, after his Valory debut became such a rousing commercial (not to mention critical) success.
 

Gilbert's bad boy outlaw personality isn’t just a commercial act, but a reality, and it blasts out through your speakers whether you're ready for it or not on many songs, especially the stage-setting opener, "If You Want A Bad Boy" and the fantastically testosterone-fueled "Ready Me My Rights", which appears on the Deluxe edition. It’s hard for me to pick just one favourite from this album, but "Rights" is up there in contention. It's awesome beyond words, rockin' guitars and growling lyrics. 

The album's second single, just released to radio in America, is "Small Town Throwdown" another macho party song, that features Gilbert's Valory label mates Justin Moore and Thomas Rhett, and is definitely an anthem of small-town trouble on Friday and Saturday nights in America. As great as the song itself is - and it really is - the best part is hearing the three artists talking trash between verses. This will be a definite concert winner. 

It was the first single, "Bottoms Up" that really launched Just As I Am, and the tune with a slight rap touch to it, a song about getting drunk and, if the awesome gangster-style video clip – see below – is anything to go by, about running from the law and there’s nothing country audiences like more than an outlaw singing about getting tanked. It’s a song that's guaranteed to get into your head, and guaranteed to stay there, too.

 

In keeping with what the heavily-tattooed Gilbert calls his bipolar self, there’s also plenty of mid-tempo ballads, the sort of stuff that wouldn’t be out of place on a mainstream rock release from the 80's or 90's. In fact, Gilbert tends that way on most songs, with more crunching guitar riffs than there are slide guitar parts and banjo solos. It’s a niche that he fits into pretty nicely, and although the music is heavy, there are many nods to Gilbert’s life before Nashville.

As Gilbert is at great pains to stress, he doesn’t sing what he doesn’t write, and he doesn’t write what he hasn’t lived. You can definitely see the young Brantley Gilbert in " the epic 17 Again", an ode to his middle teenage years, reliving the life he led and the girls he was with – you know, sneak into her bedroom and take her out in his truck – and in a small Georgia town before fame, fortune and Music City USA beckoned. It’s a wonderfully nostalgic tune, for those of us who left childhood long behind, but remember it fondly.

Speaking of epic, "Lights Of My Hometown" is just that, written, presumably, about his hometown of Jefferson, Georgia. Clocking in at more than 5:00  (a rarity in modern music these days, it sits nicely on an album which is interspersed with hard-rockin’ songs and heartfelt ballads. Gilbert’s bipolar self, remember?

‘My Baby’s Guns N Roses’ is a not-so-veiled tribute to the great 90’s rock band and to women, and could well be a follow up to Gilbert’s own hit single, ‘She’s My Kind Of Crazy’ from Halfway to Heaven, such are it’s references to a girl being a rock star. Any song that name checks ‘Paradise City’, among others, is okay with me, too.

Tim McGraw said it once: there ain't nothing in the whole wide world like a southern girl, and Brantley reaffirms this, with "G.R.I.T.S" (a clever acronym play on words with the southern breakfast delicacy, standing, in this case, for Girls Raised In The South), a tribute to the suntanned country girls to be found below the Mason-Dixon Line. The song is a re-worked version of the original, which can be found on his debut, Modern Day Prodigal Son.

Really, there are too many good songs on here to list. Just buy the album - you won't be disappointed. 

Many predict that Gilbert is going to be country’s next big thing – this album, which nicely mixes hard rock and a few good rock ballads (whilst giving many nods, of course, to country life and winning country song-type formulas) might be the first step towards domination. It's certainly not going to lose Gilbert any fans.

Proof of Gilbert's increasing commercial appeal - and the power of #BGNation - is in the pudding. Just As I Am debuted at second on the Billboard 200, behind only the Coldplay juggernaut, and, thanks to it’s cranking rock riffs, has incredible crossover potential.

Let’s hope Gilbert doesn’t wait another four years to release some new stuff!

Just As I Am - Track Listing

1. If You Want A Bad Boy
2. 17 Again
3. Bottoms Up
4. That Was Us
5. I'm Gone
6. My Baby's Guns N Roses
7. Lights Of My Hometown
8. One Hell Of An Amen
9. Small Town Throwdown (Feat. Justin Moore & Thomas Rhett)
10. Let It Ride
11. My Faith In You
12. G.R.I.T.S
13. Read Me My Right
14. Grown-Ass Man