Butch Walker – Stay Gold (2016) [Qobuz FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Bradley Glenn “Butch” Walker is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the lead guitarist for the glam metal band SouthGang from the late 1980s to early 1990s as well as the lead vocalist and guitarist for rock band Marvelous 3 from 1997 until 2001. “Stay Gold” is his eighth full-length studio solo album. As Walker enters this new phase of his career, one marked perhaps more by an appreciation of his own work rather than the work he does with others, “Stay Gold”, with its many brilliant moments, lights the way.

Butch Walker is a guy who wants it both ways — he wants to write personal songs full of telling details and anecdotes, but he also wants them to sound like anthems that will fill up arenas and burst out of the radio. Walker has done more than his share of creative shape-shifting since he launched his solo career in 2004, and on 2016’s Stay Gold, he sounds like this year’s goal is to be Bruce Springsteen, with Keith Richards playing guitar and lending occasional melodic advice. Walker’s grand scale heartland rock, seasoned with the swagger of an overgrown street kid, sounds pretty convincing on Stay Gold, though the snarky guy looking for cheap weed and good times on the title cut doesn’t sound the same as the lovelorn dude wearing his heart on his sleeve on “Descending.” Walker has enjoyed a successful side career as a producer and songwriter, and he and Ryan Adams (credited as “overall album concept co-conspirator”) have made a record that’s rollicking and slick at the same time, and if the details that are supposed to make numbers like “Mexican Coke” and “Record Store” come to life seem more forced than sincere, you can’t deny that Walker has put plenty of sweat and elbow grease into this. Some songwriters sound as if they’re talking to you heart to heart, while others seem to be reading you a story that they’ve been tinkering with for a few months. On Stay Gold, Walker falls into the latter camp, but if these songs lack a certain spontaneity, the craft is strong and Walker seems so eager to sound like a rock star that you just might mistake him for the real thing. ~ Mark Deming

Tracklist:
01 – Stay Gold
02 – East Coast Girl
03 – Wilder in the Heart
04 – Ludlow Expectations
05 – Descending
06 – Irish Exit
07 – Mexican Coke
08 – Can We Just Not Talk About Last Night
09 – Spark: Lost
10 – Record Store

Download:

mqs.link_ButchWalkerStayGld2016Qbuz2496.rar

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