Album Review – Zach Bryan’s “Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs”

Contemporary Folk (#576) and Americana (#570) on the Country DDS.

What do you do when you’ve just now turned 30, and you’ve already sold your song catalog for a reported $350 million? And this is all from a guy that when all of this started a mere seven years ago, he said he never wanted to quit the Navy, and didn’t even know what a career in music would look like. Now he’s selling out stadiums on consecutive nights, sparked an entire legion of extremely successful and conventionally subpar singer/songwriters with sloppy lyricism and genre-neutral accompaniment, and is perhaps the most influential artist of this generation.

Apparently what you do is you release an 8-song EP to accompany a book about the first 30 years of your life, and try to figure out how to tell this improbable story from your own perspective. You might have forgotten, but Zach already released a 25-song album back in January called With Heaven On Top. It’s probably not the album that most Zach Bryan fans will cite as their favorite. Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs might not be either. But it does feel like a step in the right direction.

The conventional metrics of how to regard music have never applied to Zach Bryan, and they most certainly don’t apply to him now. That doesn’t mean any conventional criticisms are not legitimate. His songs do feel undercooked, even when they deliver sharp lines. The production is sloppy and directionless, even if it still comes with that enlivened, lived-in, and invigorating feeling that comes from an artist singing their guts out. Zach Bryan is still more of a writer and poet than a musician, soldiering through making music because that’s the medium that chose him.

Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs does officially have producers unlike Zach’s last album that was self-produced. Bryan is once again joined by Eddie Spear, who worked on arguably Zach Bryan’s best titles, Summertime Blues and American Heartbreak. Eddie also worked with Sierra Ferrell on her 4-time Grammy-winning Trail of Flowers, and with Jesse Welles, Colby Acuff, Cody Jinks, and others. The other producer is Jamie McLaughlin who worked most recently with Morgan Wallen and on the polarizing new Wyatt Flores record.

But any worries about this album being some sort of sellout moment are quickly put to bed. It’s very much a Zach Bryan record, to the chagrin of his critics, and to the delight of his fans. Sure, the Lana Del Rey single is probably meant to pique outside interest, and put Zach on the radar of certain untapped pop audiences. But everything on this album is written by Zach alone, aside from the collaboration with Lana Del Rey, and later the song with Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours on “Plainsman.”

Zach Bryan has explained that the album art is inspired by the idea of killing off one’s self off every day to make yourself anew and better. The inspiration for the title is when Bryan was in the hospital with his mother DeAnn, holding her hand in her last moments and processing his grief, and someone showed up with a clipboard asking him if he wanted to donate her organs. It felt like a metaphor for how no matter how much you give, they still want more from you at the end of your life.

Zach Bryan will never be good enough for his detractors. He’s just not a good enough musician from a conventional standpoint to overcome preconceived ideas of what great music is. He’s also too popular, which makes him perennially uncool with various cohorts of independent and grassroots fans. But overall, Young Manhood tries better to find the beauty in each song and expose it, unlike some of his most recent work, while also maintaining that raw, unpolished aspect to Zach’s music that creates the zeal and the deep connection with what he does among a massive legion of fans for what is ultimately heartfelt singer/songwriter music.

8/10

Song Reviews:

1. Lodi When

One of the issues with many Zach Bryan songs is they often lack a defined melody or rising structure. This is the reason for the disconnect between his dedicated fans and discerning dissenters. “Lodi When” starts off with a little ambient weirdness that will immediately trip some listeners up, and the organ/synthesizer doesn’t fit exactly right in this song. But the strong melody matches the reminiscent writing that sets the very literary-based perspective Zach brings to this album. The gang vocals also assist in the singalong nature of so many of Zach Bryan’s songs. You can hear this becoming the “hit” of the album, along with the Lana Del Rey track.

2. Robot Killed The Working Man

This will definitely be one of the most discussed tracks on the record, and feels starkly relevant, if not prescient, with a lot of smoldering rage coming from Zach after a sample from wrestler Dusty Rhodes introduces the song. What’s cool about “Robot Killed The Working Man” is it’s not entirely set in the present tense, and instead hearkens back to the industrial revolution and the other transformational periods when technology disrupted labor flows and caused upheaval in society. But without naming names, this song is clearly about the impending AI revolution, and what that might result in. It’s a protest song, but one that benefits from using story to get its point across.

3. Lies (feat. Lana Del Rey)

Unlike so many Zach Bryan songs where there’s a lot of production decisions that muddy up the listening experience (including on this album), “Lies” is refreshingly clean, with the piano rendered par excellence, and the string arrangements really done superbly. Unlike many Zach Bryan songs that take his voice to awkward places, this one finds the sweet spot for both Zach and Lana Del Rey, which is not always easy to do.

“Lies” is a refreshing track in the Zach Bryan listening experience, even if you’re fair to wonder if it has the heft or body as a track to reach the true escape velocity it hopes to—like his collaboration with Kacey Musgraves on “I Remember Everything” did.

The writing of the song is good, though perhaps not as clever as it thinks it is. The line in the bridge that goes, “I’ll say anything just to see your little smile. How I’ll be here in the morning. Now I’ll be here for a while,” could be taken as too close for comfort to Townes Van Zandt’s “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” or perhaps it’s so obvious, it’s meant to be received as an homage or callback.

“Lies” is a pleasant song, and accomplishes what it seeks to do.

4. Dog Days

“Dog Days” is the Springsteen, Heartland rocker of the record, and fulfills this requisite quite well. Though the track has that Zach Bryan reckless abandon to it—and that includes him going to his growl-like voice—this song also feels very intentional and under control. The lyrics are some of the most direct of the record in admitting to his youthful indiscretions and past mistakes, presumably to a lover who he makes no excuses to, but also is willing to be honest with, along with his hope that he’s moved on.

5. Backwards

This might be the best-written song on the album. Zach Bryan employs the metaphor of walking backwards and reversing everything you said to clean up past mistakes, and hopefully, move forward once again. This theme of stopping and starting, making the same mistake numerous times before learning and moving on, and how this is all part of the process of growing up and become an adult is a recurrent theme throughout the album. It just happens to be that Zach Bryan had to do this with the rest of the world watching, the press leering in the shadows and always ready to pounce, and other opportunists always looking to exploit any vulnerabilities for their own gain.

6. Plainsman (feat. Turnpike Troubadours)

It’s really cool to see and hear Zach Bryan collaborating with the Turnpike Troubadours, whose origin stories both start in north east Oklahoma, and less than 50 miles away. You would love for this track to become one of those discovery mechanisms for Turnpike like Zach Bryan collaborations have been for Charles Wesley Godwin, Sierra Ferrell, and others. And it very well might be. But this song also feels a bit awkward from where the song takes the voices of Zach Bryan and Evan Felker both. “Plainsman” probably includes the highest register we’ve ever heard Felker sing in, though he handles it well. Zach’s voice gets so high near the end, it fails him.

That failing, imperfect aspect is what some people love about a Zach Bryan song. But you do wonder if “Plainsman” could have been rendered better, and a pass or two through the lyricism to remove some of the clichés and inconsistencies would have resulted in a stronger track. It’s not bad, but doesn’t feel like the home run you were hoping for from this pairing.

The opening quote is from the Ben Mendelsohn character in the 2012 film The Place Beyond the Pines.

7. Is The Blue Tangled Up In You?

At first this song and the music come across as one of those more sloppy Zach Bryan moments where he strains to make a point we can all connect with, even if the song is personal and important to Zach himself. Subsequent listens begin to expose the strong sense of melody in the song, while the autobiographical lyrics begin to resonate more, including the recitation with distressed audio where the best writing of the song is presented.

Ain’t you gonna live forever? Ain’t you gonna die young?
You can’t have it both ways, boy, you’re better off picking one
Ain’t you gonna be a big star? You love when they call your name
Ain’t you gonna be yourself and fuck up everything?

8. You’ll Get By

This song captures the 30 year old Zach Bryan speaking to the 23 year old Zach Bryan about what he’s about to go through, and how he will persevere through it, while imparting a lot of that wisdom to other men and women, both young and old. “You’ll Get By” might also be one of the more “country” songs on the album with the steel guitar from Read Connolly on an album where there really isn’t that many country moments to speak of. This song is a good, reflective way to conclude the EP.

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