Album Review: Chris Stapleton - Higher

Back in 2015, after working in Nashville’s backrooms as a successful songwriter (his name was already on several country number-ones) for years, Chris Stapleton broke out internationally with an appearance on the Country Music Association Awards where he performed a seemingly incongruous duet with Justin Timberlake. They sang David Allen Coe’s ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ and Timberlake’s own ‘Drink You Away’.

Stapleton, with his beard, long hair, and battered hat might have looked like a separate species altogether from the eternally boyish Timberlake, who to be fair more than held his own, but the bigger man's voice cut through everything around it. His debut Traveller went on to be Grammy nominated for album of the year and sell in the millions. He followed up this winning combination of southern rock and outlaw country with From A Room Volumes 1 and 2 and 2020’s Starting Over. They all sold like cold cures because they’re all great.

‘White Horse’ was released as a single in July of this year as a trailer for album number five. Originally written for the 2013 Johnny Depp-starring turkey The Lone Ranger, it didn’t make the cut which puts it in the unique position of being the best thing about a movie it wasn’t even in. The doubt in the lyric sets him further apart from conveyor belt country obsessed with beer and trucks and there's genuine soulful regret in that big sound. Call it country, 'cause that's what it is, but those rolling guitars rock as hard as anything else released this year. It's the kind of song Jon Bon Jovi has dreamt in vain about writing for decades.

‘South Dakota’ cuts a bluesy groove before the chorus unleashes both a slide guitar and his canyon-wide yell, and continues the immortalising of US place names he began on Starting Over with ‘Arkansas’ and ‘Nashville, TN’. You can’t help but feel it wouldn’t have the same power if he was singing about Tinahely. The keening pedal steel in ‘Crosswind’ creates a widescreen movie around the lyric of hard times. ‘Think I’m In Love With You’ surprisingly owes a few bob to the eighties. You could imagine Daryl Hall making a fair fist of it. ‘Loving You On My Mind’ reminds the listener of a very soulful Waylon Jennings record right down to the slightly flanged guitar. ‘The Bottom’ could be Springsteen, on a good day, and 'Trust' might be an off cut from one of Stapleton's favourite records, Tom Petty's immortal Wildflowers.

Most of the rest finds Chris in country ballad mode which is a perfectly fine state of affairs as he's probably the number one practitioner of that art in the world right now. ‘What Am I Gonna Do’ has his voice and that of constant companion and collaborator, Mrs Morgane Stapleton, melding in heavenly fashion, as they do every time they come in contact on this record (listen to them on ‘Weight Of Your World’), especially when they head up the register towards the end of the chorus before a perfect slide guitar solo comes in. The arrangement of slow waltz ‘It Takes A Woman’ is the epitome of Stapleton’s tastefulness. The barebones three-piece sound is propped up by drums and bass that are hardly there at all but would be missed if they were taken away. The voices are given the space to do their work and it takes a gifted songwriter to go for that unexpected minor chord behind the first line of the chorus.

Everything here works because Stapleton does what he does so well – he's the best country songwriter who isn't called Willie Nelson there is since Merle shuffled off, he has a true record maker’s sensitive ear for what goes where and what's enough, and his voice, whether it's scraping the sky on the title track or finding trouble in 'South Dakota', could make God weep. His near-perfect run of albums shows no sign of stopping just yet.