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The moment Zach Bryan fans have been longing for over the past six months has finally arrived.
This week, the Oklahoma native confirmed that recording is officially getting underway for his hotly anticipated American Heartbreak follow-up, Writers and Fighters.
Alongside a video of him performing a song snippet, Zach wrote, “finally recording week”, before going on to hint that the upcoming album will be more piano-driven than his previous record, teasing “it's going to be a long terrible piano journey for all of us involved”.
The song Zach is performing in the clip is one of his many previously shared unreleased tracks, seemingly entitled either ‘Lost Faith in the World’ or ‘Summertime's Close’. He first posted a snippet of the song earlier in the year, with the singer-songwriter crooning wistfully over an easy-going, soothing acoustic guitar.
The newly shared clip finds the ‘Something in the Orange’ hitmaker performing the song alongside a piano. Judging from his caption, it appears Writers and Fighters will feature keys as the main accompaniment, signifying a shift away from the guitar-driven sound that pervaded both American Heartbreak and Summertime Blues.
The Grammy-nominated artist previously revealed that Writers and Fighters will feature just eleven tracks, a drastic reduction compared to the sprawling 34-song American Heartbreak.
With the country-folk prodigy having shared over thirty unreleased snippets and demos since the release of the now Platinum-certified American Heartbreak in May 2022, many fan-favourites will inevitably fail to make the cut.
Given the fact that Zach Bryan chose to share a performance of ‘Lost Faith in the World/Summertime's Close’ for a second time, it appears this is at the front of the queue of songs that are set to appear on the Writers and Fighters tracklist.
We suspect other much-loved unreleased tracks such as ‘Deep Satin’ - which Zach has been performing regularly throughout his 2023 live shows - and his recently teased collaboration with The War and Treaty are all likely to be included on the new record.
It's unclear whether the plethora of love-songs Zach penned for his now ex-girlfriend, Deb Peifer, such as ‘Fear and Fridays’, will feature on Writers and Fighters, with the two having split up last month.
Given the calibre of unreleased music Zach has been teasing, we're keeping our fingers crossed that he chooses to expand the length of the album during this week of recording to somewhere closer to fifteen or possibly even eighteen tracks.
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