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.”
The authenticity of who Gilbert is permeates, is something the NPR essay considers. Citing Fetty Wap and an R&B undertow, Hight offers, “Brantley Gilbert, who's behind some of the brawniest country radio singles of the last half-decade, has declined to budge. If anything, the 32-year-old, Georgia-born singer and songwriter digs in his heels on his fourth album, The Devil Don't Sleep, making clear that he's committed to not only inhabiting but thoroughly exploring a particular kind of bro-ish identity: the tough guy tentatively wading into introspective territory…Gilbert is acutely aware of what keeps his audience feeling connected to him — that his fans, branded the BG Nation, identify with his bellicose tone, his defiant posture, the contempt he aims at any hint of condescension, the slight suggestion of softness behind the sneer.”
The introspection NPR singles out studies Gilbert’s struggles and falters. Writing, “he deploys it with a visceral sense of investment. The devil's role in the title track isn't cartoonish caricature. Gilbert captures the paranoia of never being entirely safe from one's most depraved impulses, and sets a sinister tone with the intro…Because he has a strong hand in writing all of his material and plays up the personal conviction in his performances, it feels easy to locate him in the music.”
To that end, redemption is a powerful force on Devil as well. Citing the album’s closing “Three Feet of Water,” the essay concludes, “For nearly four minutes, he drops all traces of gruffness, singing conventional evangelical devotional language with earnestness and deference, marveling at the possibility of renewal symbolized by Christian baptism, voicing doubts before relinquishing them. It sounds as though he's singing to himself, shoring up his own confidence in his experiences of transformation, as much as he's singing to anyone else. But his notion of rebirth doesn't presume that an embrace of pious respectability will be part of the bargain. Saturday night and Sunday morning coexist in his realm, and the tension between the two pulls him deeper.”
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