CARLTON FLETCHER: A mature Luke Bryan’s fifth album is his best yet

All the starry-eyed cowgirls will tell you that Leesburg native and country music superstar Luke Bryan looks just as good in a tight pair of jeans today as he did when he crashed Nashville’s Music City party a decade or so ago.

But Bryan, at 39 (as of last Friday) one of the four or five country music names who fill arenas wherever they play, knows he’s not the partying frat boy he was when he left Southwest Georgia in search of the fame and fortune that he’s attained. He’s a family man now — and by all reports, at least somewhat more mature — and he knows that life’s a little more than the cornfield throwdowns and Gulf of Mexico beach parties he’s made millions singing about.

It should be no surprise, then, that many of the songs on Bryan’s latest album, “Kill the Lights,” which is set for release Aug. 7, offer more than a passing nod to that newfound maturity. What may be a surprise to some is that Bryan’s exploration of some of life’s grown-up mysteries helps make his latest batch of songs his best album ever, a tour de force that should keep him on the country album and singles charts for the next several months.

Bryan and his old Albany running buddy/writing partner Dallas Davidson team up on a couple of the songs on “Kill the Lights,” including the rave-up first single from the album, “Kick the Dust Up,” which is also the name of Bryan’s current tour. Davidson and his pals Rhett Akins and Ben Hayslip also collaborated with Bryan on “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day,” which is the best song on the album.

In getting caught up in the Skynyrd-by-way-of-Hank Jr. tune, which offers the money-shot tag line, “Huntin’, fishin’ and lovin’ every day, That’s the prayer that a country boy prays,” Bryan does something he’s rarely done on his previous four proper albums. He lets himself go, offering fans a glimpse of the Luke they get onstage.

Casual fans will love the song, but home folks will get a knowing kick out of the line, “While y’all are up there breathin’ in that dirty air, I’ll be down here, knee-deep in the Muckalee.”

Bryan is known to kick the dust up when he’s performing some of his more raucus tunes, but he has a voice made for ballads. There are two exceptional ones on “Kill the Lights,” the wonderful “To the Moon and Back” — which rivals “Huntin’” for designation as the album’s best song — and “Strip It Down,” which gives both a run for top song honors.

Both songs are bared-soul love songs, “Moon” a declaration of endless devotion — “Until our song is over, ‘til the stars all fade to black, I’m gonna love you to the ends of the Earth, to the moon and back.” — and “Strip” an attempt to rekindle a flickering romantic flame — “Strip it down, back to you and me, like it used to be. We both know that we lost it somehow, Let’s get it found, Strip it down, down, down.”

Another sign of Bryan’s maturity as an artist on “Kill the Lights” is his writing contributions. He co-wrote six of the 13 songs on the album, collaborating with his Sylvester guitarist Michael Carter on the rocker “Move,” while another homeboy, Cuthbert’s Cole Taylor, co-wrote “Home Alone Tonight.” That revenge duet with Karen Fairchild features the biting chorus, “Snap a payback picture … You send it to your ex, I’ll send it to my ex. We’ll send ‘em both a text saying we ain’t going home alone tonight.”

Bryan seems to have a whole lot of fun on “Kill the Lights,” name-checking old haunts from his Southwest Georgia days (“‘neath the 32 bridge,” “This hundred-acre stretch is buried in my bones.”), turning inward wistfully on the perfect album closer, “Scarecrows” (“Just some old plowboys pretending we’re cowboys, we came from nothing but look at us now boys.”), and bowing to the inevitability of a lost love in “Just Over.” (“She don’t need no shoulder to cry on, she’s gone. She ain’t pulling over, it’s just over, like the life she’s starting over without me.”)

The guitar work on “Kill the Lights” is excellent, at times almost subconsciously buried in the mix but present enough to register, but this is a singer’s album. There are bits of fiddle and banjo here and there, but “Lights” is primarily about Bryan’s piercing baritone holding forth on some of the best-written tunes to come out of Nashville in quite some time.

Bryan also seems to have a lot of fun on “Kill the Lights,” the kind of fun he has in concert when he breaks out an old Metallica classic. His little Elvis homage on the “Lemme, lemmes” in the chorus of “Love It Gone” (“I’ve got a whole lot of love that I’ve been saving, Lemme, lemme love it gone.”) is infectious in a good way, and when he bleeds lines like “We keep our boots and our roots in these corn rows,” it’s easy enough to believe that gain and glory have not washed the muddy creek waters of the Kinchafoonee and, yes, the Muckalee, from his soul.

Twelve No. 1 singles, 7 million albums, 27 million digital tracks into his career, with CMA and ACM Entertainer of the Year awards sitting on the mantle in his newly built Nashville home, a creative letdown from Bryan on album No. 5 would not have been a huge surprise. Instead, the man gives fans a musical treat: the best album of his career. His soul may ever reside in Southwest Georgia, but the abundent talent of this guy we call Luke belongs now to the world.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.