Keith Urban Hits New HIGHs with New Release
The veteran guitarist and singer/songwriter continues experimental ways with latest album while also exploring personal themes from his life more than ever before.
There are few artists who’ve been consistently making music that appeals to my musical sensibilities than Keith Urban has. Since his early days in the USA with The Ranch (where I first saw him perform at a festival at Washington State’s The Gorge Amphitheater in 1997 on a bill which featured many favorites of my musical history including Collin Raye and headliner Vince Gill), I’ve just gravitated to his music. From “Walkin’ The Country” to his current big hit “Messed Up As Me,” I’ve been there for it all.
It’s amazing to think he’s been in country music’s mainstream that long and for 25 years this year as a solo artist after “It’s A Love Thing” became his first Top 20 hit. It’s been an interesting ride full of many peaks and as the world changed around the Pandemic years of 2020-2022, Keith Urban seemingly went inward and worked up an album which has been long gestating. Always creating and working on vibes and pulling sounds from the musical world around him, Keith Urban’s new album HIGH, his first since 2020’s The Speed of Now, feels like a musical and sonic cousin to his self-titled solo debut, it’s follow-up Golden Roadand mid 2010s Ripcord and Fuse. A mix of raw, introspection and the melodic groove that just feeds the soul when you want to get lost in an album or serve as the soundtrack for a drive on the backroads.
I guess, what really is pulling on me as I listen to HIGH when writing this is how he’s blended outside songs from writers like Shane McAnally, Justin Tranter, Nathan Barlowe, Ben Stennis and others with his own songs, including really personally narrative songs like the closing song “Break The Chain.” The songs are all cohesive. Even his EMO country moment like “Love Is Hard” blends into the album’s overall feel and vibe.”
Keith Urban has long lived on the boundaries of what is country music and while everything hasn’t always worked, he’s largely helped the genre go forward while also staying “relevant” with mainstream audiences because of his expansive creativity and willingness to explore musically. That willingness extends to songs like “Laughed All The Way To The Drank,” the previously mentioned “Love Is Hard,” “Straight Line,” “Wildside” and “Chuck Taylors.” It is the threads of these songs which grab at me but even on an album of bangers, it’s always appreciated, in the grand Nashville and Country Music way, to have emotionally substantial ballads and HIGH closes with two such songs in “Dodge In A Silverado” and “Break The Chain.” The former has a beatutiful piano instrumental bed with emotive guitar from Keith as he emotes the lyrics while the latter is maybe the most introspective and personal song Keith Urban has ever released as he’s letting the world into his life as he talks about becoming a better person post-addiction and coming to terms with the rough childhood at the hands of his own father. If you don’t feel something from this deeply moving song, I don’t know what to tell you.
Throughout my life there have been few artists who speak to me with their music the way Keith Urban has managed to do. Now, it’s time to hit some twisty country roads with the windows down, and the volume turned all the way up HIGH.