The opening, title track tells you everything you need to know about why Tristan Roberson is becoming known as the poster boy of the modern country scene. As the song twangs and roars and grooves and two-steps its way across the listener’s consciousness, you can hear everything that country-rock was built on, everything that is great about its sound today, and all the places where it seems to be going. That’s a great way to kick off an album.
It’s a neat trick and one that he seems effortlessly able to pull off across a broad country soundscape. ‘Everything About You’ takes on the folky, fiddly bluegrass side of country’s interlaced sub-genres, enriching the sound with guitars and banjo textures, icing the cake with finessed violin lines.
‘In The Dust’ blends Nashville traditions with the raw and roaring sound of alt-country and even adds a few full-on rock and roll moves; ‘Just Wonderin’ is a country-pop ballad, a contemporary take on the timeless heart-aching corner stone of the cowboy canon of music and ‘Give Me Thirty’ takes things into the same territory that the likes of Petty and Mellencamp made such an intriguing and exciting place to call home.
The neat thing about Roberson is that he is not merely tipping his hat to the sounds of the past, nor is he trying too hard to usher the future in. He isn’t making a sound that sets him too far apart from existing comfort zones, nor is he part of a scene. He is doing all that at the same time. But more than that, beyond all the what ifs and wherefores, the journalistic assessment (well, it is my job) and marking its place on the musical map, Down For the Ride is simply a flippin’ damn great album, and that, at the end of the day, is all that matters.
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