First Listen: Holler Reacts to Dierks Bentley's 'Broken Branches'

Dierks Bentley is back with his eleventh studio album, Broken Branches. The follow-up 2023's fan-favorite Gravel & Gold, the new album is an 11-track homage to the country music community and the mavericks who push its boundaries from within.

With a handful of songs meant to make heroes out of outcasts and transform supposed flaws into individual strengths, Broken Branches was marketed as the hitmaker's most mature and evolved work to date. But did he actually accomplish such a feat?

After spending time with Dierks Bentley's latest, the Holler staff has some things to say:

A single tree can foster an entire ecosystem, supporting millions of organisms throughout its lifespan. Time may twist and gnarl its features, seasons arriving to test its mettle, but still, the tree–and that which depends on it–remains.

With Broken Branches, Dierks Bentley uses such a life force to represent the country music community, an ever-changing but always rooted entity.

At the same time, the artist suggests that every tree has its damaged limbs, just as the genre has its black sheep. In this case, one couldn’t exist without the other, and he is among country music’s broken branches. It’s a little clumsy an allegory, but so is the album.

In truth, Bentley’s latest is just what I expected it to be: fine.

Mostly written by and for those supposed outliers of the genre, Broken Branches is meant to celebrate the quirks and imperfections that make a community just that, a place where differences are embraced and simply being is celebrated. Ultimately, the collection burdens listeners with filler, making them wade through mediocrity for a few fleeting insights buried across its 11 tracks.

You’ll trudge through flimsy love songs like the brisk, Miranda Lambert-backed ‘Never You’. You’ll stumble about in the formulaic swill of the hollow ’Well Well Whisky’ and the thin ‘Off The Map’, the sentiments of which lesser artists have sung with more finesse. That's all while having to teeter around the simple adjectives and flat verses in the showboating ‘Something Worth Fixing’ and the sanctimonious ‘Jesus Loves Me’, a song about faith that’s far too tangled in arbitrary heartbreak.

Through the mire, however, exists the staggering, Stephen Wilson Jr.-assisted ‘Cold Beer Can’, in which wisdoms flash like fireflies in the night, and the album’s bright closer ‘Don’t Cry For Me’, making for two earnest bookends of a fairly lackluster collection.

All in all, Broken Branches is not a bad album; it just promises a lot and harbors nothing we haven’t heard before, especially from Bentley himself.

Much like 2023’s promising Gravel & Gold, there are elements of Dierks Bentley’s Broken Branches that absolutely work… even if as a whole the collection is thematically disjointed. Though, it’s hard to resist the heart behind the album’s meaning entirely, especially with the creation of the associated namesake fund to provide mental health resources to the music industry’s creative and touring communities.

That’s what makes rock-laced cuts like ‘She Hates Me’ and ‘Well, Well Whiskey’ feel so out of place against the more mature ‘For As Long As I Can Remember’ and superbly sentimental ‘Don’t Cry For Me.’ The latter two provide introspection into the current mind of a beloved artist who’s been a steady force in the country community since his breakthrough in 2003.

While offering stellar production and displaying Bentley’s fine-like-wine vocals, the album could have benefited from more authentic reflections of his present life, instead of rehashing overdone radio fodder that feels beneath an artist of his caliber at this moment in time.

A good chunk of this album feels like things we’ve heard before. ‘Off The Map,’ ‘Jesus Loves Me’ and ‘For As Long As I Can Remember’ could’ve been released at any point over the last ten years, and it feels like they have been. The title track featuring John Anderson and Riley Green is catchy, well-intentioned and works weirdly well, yet the “black sheep” vision for this album remains lukewarm.

While ‘Cold Beer Can’ is a solid opener with Stephen Wilson Jr., Bentley’s just not reaching far enough. The bluegrass roots on ‘Well Well Whiskey’ are there but grow into a typical country-radio anthem, feeling more like a half-hearted recognition of the roots scene rather than a callback to Bentley’s bluegrass origins.

The stand out track ‘She Hates Me’ spins a typical perfect girl verse into an early 2000s country tinged alt-rock track with enough grungy guitar work and self-deprecating humour to be a Bentley highlight. But across the album as a whole, a few of the branches are staying broken, a couple of them are undoubtedly strong and some feel like they have signs of new life.

I guess, even after twenty years, Bentley is still growing… or trying to at least?

Dierks Bentley’s new album, Broken Branches, feels like a tired echo of every country music stereotype that just won’t die. From the very first track, 'Cold Beer Can', it’s clear Bentley’s leaning hard into formula–basic melodies, predicable metaphors and uninspired themes.

Songs like 'Jesus Loves Me' and 'For As Long As I Can Remember' rely on worn out tropes of the Bible versus the bottle, and not in a fresh or reflective way–it feels more like lazy songwriting. Even the feature with Miranda Lambert on 'Never You' falls flat, with Lambert’s vocals being the only redeeming quality in a forgettable track.

'Standing in the Sun' and 'Well Well Whiskey' blur into each other with their generic hooks, while the title track with John Anderson and Riley Green is just another unnecessary spin on “I drink and ruin everything.” The only track with real emotional resonance is 'Don’t Cry for Me', which stands out as honest and self-aware, a brief glimpse of depth.

Overall, the album feels like a disappointing attempt to recreate a sound that should've evolved by now. It's a glossy, radio-friendly version of country that says nothing new–just another bottle, another breakup, another beat you’ve already heard.

The best of Broken Branches has, undoubtedly, already been released.

Opening with the standout ‘Cold Beer Can’ ft. Stephen Wilson Jr., expectations are high. Wilson’s vocals add a gravel to the track, while the simplicity of the narrative and melody feel like catching up with an old friend. This is unfortunately a short-lived experience as soon as we get to the next track.

‘Jesus Loves Me’ doesn’t hit the mark. The lyrics are juvenile, the rhymes forced and the narrative tired. It feels like the messy younger sibling to what's next. ‘She Hates Me’ has been a successful release for Bentley, with its catchy hooks and upbeat melodies, but its position on the album gives listeners whiplash and feels like a smoother, more experienced older brother telling the same story.

A lacklustre first half of the album is saved by a couple of great collaborations and some more relatable tracks in the second half. Miranda Lambert lends her distinct twang to ‘Never You’ and John Anderson and Riley Green add some flavour to the catchy titular track. Bentley rounds off the album with ‘Don’t Cry For Me’, celebrating his life’s proudest moments and sealing a somewhat disappointing record with something reminiscent of emotional integrity.

It’s not a bad album, it just doesn’t hit as good as the single releases led us to think it would.

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