NPR Puts Brantley Gilbert's New "DEVIL..." Album on The Record

Brantley Gilbert, with his tattoos and motorcycles  may not seem like an NPR natural, but with his The Devil Don’t Sleep, NPR contributor Jewly Hight goes deep on this week’s Top 200 Albums #1 seller. Juxtaposing the Jefferson, Georgia songwriter’s authenticity with the larger realm of BroCountry, she arrives at intriguing conclusions as she considers an album that is unrepentantly consistent with Gilbert’s back-to-back platinum Halfway To Heaven and the 2014 American Music Awards Favorite Country Album Just As I Am.

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Writing of the current single “The Weekend,” she opines, “the thing that really makes the song, and much of Gilbert's music, feel as pugnacious as it does is the way that he sings… he uses it to accentuate the extremes of his performing persona, channeling stubborn small town resilience through his clenched drawl, airing aggression through his strenuous, sandpapered rasp and hinting at pent-up ferocity with surly, monosyllabic spoken asides. His performances are instantly recognizable, often confrontational and pack a punch.”

“All I’ve ever done (with my songwriting) is write my life,” says the man who penned Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem,” nominated for CMA Song and Single of the Year. “All these songs are pages from life, and the albums are chapters. What she – or anyone hears – is what I’ve lived in the time in between.”

Brantley Gilbert Back with The Devil Don't Sleep Album

For Brantley Gilbert, his back-to-back platinum success comes from writing about his life – and watching the people who live like he does respond. If Halfway To Heaven was the story of a young man in the clutches of all it means to be wild, and Just As I Am considered the consequences of the life and the good times getting there, The Devil Don’t Sleep marks the next phase of the working class country icon in the making’s life.

Sixteen songs on the regular disc. Ten more on the Deluxe Edition. It’s a whole lot of music from country music’s hardest hitting songwriter/artist. It’s also a lot of life lived.

“A lot has happened,” marvels the man nominated for CMA Song of the Year for Jason Aldean’s signature “Dirt Road Anthem.” “And anyone who knows me knows that every album is another chapter of my life. Even though it’s my life, even though some of what I write about is very specific to what happens to me, I think the challenges, the places where we figure things out are all the same – no matter what we’re facing, realizations all mean the same things.”

Though “The Weekend” explodes as one of Gilbert’s industrial strength five o’clock Friday party anthems, The Devil Don’t Sleep works a celebratory tip for other reasons. As Gilbert is quick to point out, the songs offer a cautionary undertow because, as the title suggests, temptation is a non-stop reality – and people need vigilance to avoid backsliding into the very things that defeat them.