Album Review – Joshua Ray Walker’s “Tropicana”

Gulf and Western (#568) on the Country DDS.

In other circumstances or from a different artist, you probably would laugh this release off, if you were even willing to give it a passing sniff in the first place. But the self-awareness Joshua Ray Walker shows in Tropicana, the cunning use of subgenre dialects and instrumental modes, and the fearlessness he brings to writing silly melodies and singing his guts out to them is a version of genius you just can’t help but appreciate.

And the context matters here. Walker might be best known for his album trilogy that started off his career by tracing the characters found at local bars in brilliant songs. But a colon cancer diagnosis, and later a lung cancer diagnosis that could have been terminal but ended up being false put Joshua Ray Walker in a frame of mind where he wanted to write music to escape his daily reality. What better way to do that than to initiate work on an album focusing on the relatively new, but unquestionable country tradition of beach songs.

Along with the towering influence of Jimmy Buffett and now Country Music Hall of Famer Kenny Chesney, the inclination for country music songwriter retreats and festivals to be held in tropical locations such as Cancun or Key West has given way to an era when a dumb beach song is almost a requirement on a mainstream country release. But that doesn’t mean that the subgenre isn’t entirely without merit. A spin through the catalog of Jimmy Buffett will confirm this.

Though the overall theme of Tropicana is to be an album of country beach songs, it’s actually a lot more diverse than that. Some of the songs don’t have anything to do with the beach at all, including one of the album’s early heaters, the super infectious “Keys to the Tacoma.” Really, this is Joshua Ray Walker’s album of pop country radio hits. But as opposed to employing a contemporary sound relevant to today, or evoking ’90s country like everyone else is doing at the moment, Walker and producer John Pedigo find this early 2000s country sound when you could still hear some twang, but pop was really starting to take over.

This album is country, with hot lead licks and steel guitar when it’s called for. But Joshua Ray Walker has always come with a soft spot for the big fluffy anthemic choruses of pop. After all, he did a covers album of all female sung pop songs in 2023 called What Is It Even? That album wasn’t meant to be taken 100% seriously, but that doesn’t mean this one should be taken as a joke in its entirety. In fact, the concept is one of the best things about this release.

And one of the reasons that Joshua Ray Walker wears these songs so well is because his voice is perfectly tooled for it. Though his songwriting is usually the first compliment given, Walker might be one of the greatest male singers of our generation, and anyone who’s seen him live will attest to that. You can also hear this near the tail end of the new song “Novella,” which also happens to be a superbly written track rendered more like folk rock.

The song “Dirty Laundry” is straight up honky tonk. “Dance With Who You Came With” it’s like a Tejano dance hall number with squeezebox. So you have to expect the unexpected with this album. Sure, there are some beach songs here. But honestly, it feels more like Joshua Ray Walker wanted to give himself permission to write and record whatever kind of country song he wanted without having to fit in some rigid expectation. That’s how he can sing the super catchy “I Don’t Wanna Be Alone” and not be judged if someone thinks it’s kind of vapid because that’s kind of the point.

The album concludes with the gallows humor of “I Hope I Have Fun Dying,” which offers a stiff reminder about the circumstances in which these songs were written. Walker wrote other songs as well, but he did what we all often do with music, which is use it as a balm to life’s ailments. If the songs of Tropicana helped Walker get through one of the worst moments of his life, nothing else really matters. But it happens to be that Tropicana is a great little listen with a lot of variety, showing off Joshua’s range in country music, and his capacity to not take life too seriously. Because after all, it can get taken from you at any moment.

8.1/10

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