Album review: Dierks Bentley's 'Home'

After years of turning out well-crafted but formulaic hits, Phoenix-bred country singer Dierks Bentley ventured into the genre’s deeper waters in 2010 with his roots-soaked album “Up On the Ridge,” which gave his always likable voice something worth singing about.

If the title of his latest effort suggests he’s back where he belongs or where he’s most comfortable, it’s doubly disappointing, as this album keeps him for the most part in the shallow end of the pool.
“Home” begins with three tracks that skitter across the surface of real feeling or illumination, and “Breathe You In” is the kind of hollow romantic wish-fulfillment tune that Nashville’s been cranking out relentlessly for a couple of decades now.

“Diamonds Make Babies” brightens things up with snappy rhymes and witty turns of phrase from co-writers Jim Beavers, Chris Stapleton and Lee Thomas Miller that sustain not just momentum but a good sense of humor. The title track is the standout, a song Bentley wrote with Dan Wilson and Brett Beavers about national pride that brings a dimension (“We’re not the same, but that’s what makes us strong”) often absent from contemporary country.

Home may be where the heart is, but Bentley was a lot more compelling when he was poking around up on the ridge.

Dierks Bentley
'Home'
Capitol Nashville
Two stars (out of four)

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— Randy Lewis

Grammy Awards: Dierks Bentley's hootenanny includes Miranda Lambert, Lady Antebellum, Dan Auerbach of Black Keys

Nashville moved west Saturday night to the Troubadour in West Hollywood, where Dierks Bentley hosted a freewheeling pre-Grammy hootenanny studded with stars from throughout the country-music firmament.

“I’d just like to say that there’s never been a more generous musician than Dierks Bentley,” said bluegrass heavyweight Sam Bush, late into the 2 1/2-hour show, and if Bush was referring to Bentley’s willingness to share his stage time, he may have been right: Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Zac Brown, Del McCoury and all three members of Lady Antebellum performed Saturday, occasionally relegating the evening’s headliner to humble backing-band duty, as in a stripped-down rendition of “Need You Now,” Lady Antebellum’s moody 2010 smash.

The sprawling guest list — which also included such Nashville outliers as Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys — reflected Bentley’s expansive approach toward country music. Or at least his newly expansive approach. Last year, following a string of slick country-rock discs, Bentley released “Up on the Ridge,” a scruffier, bluegrass-inspired effort with appearances by Kris Kristofferson, Jamey Johnson and the Punch Brothers, among others. It’s a grasp at down-home traditionalism that feels as lively as Bentley’s more pop-attuned material.

At the Troubadour, Bentley switched easily among those modes, alternating recent hits such as “Sideways” (in which he beseeches a club DJ “to keep those girls out on the floor”) with rootsy standards including Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” delivered Saturday as a no-frills duet with Zac Brown. “One for the fans, one for the heroes” was how Bentley explained his method to Lambert, who followed a rowdy version of her “Gunpowder and Lead” with “Silver Wings,” the tender Merle Haggard tune.

Elsewhere, Bentley and his band supported Williams in a lightly countrified take on Paramore’s “The Only Exception,” while actor Garrett Hedlund (of “Country Strong” and “Tron: Legacy”) channeled Kristofferson’s stentorian drawl in “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33.”

Hedlund wasn’t the only representative of Hollywood in attendance: For help doing his song “Down in the Mine,” Bentley brought to the stage Jessi Alexander, who co-wrote the Miley Cyrus hit “The Climb,” from “Hannah Montana: The Movie.” (Before they sang, Bentley recounted a meeting with Cyrus in which he excitedly informed the young singer-actress that they shared a friend in Alexander. Cyrus’ classic response: “Who?”)

The night’s most exciting performance was also its unlikeliest: a three-way jam on several old-timey folk numbers (including “Single Girl, Married Girl” and “Worried Man Blues”) by Bentley, Auerbach and McCoury, the 72-year-old bluegrass veteran whose crisp church-elder outfit made his younger peers look like roots-music ragamuffins.

“We’re not running a tight ship here,” Bentley had said earlier of the show’s willfully haphazard vibe, and it was less an apology than a point of pride.

-- Mikael Wood