Brad Paisley releases second (and better) installment of new album with ‘Beat This Summer’ – Single Review

Beat-This-Summer

If there’s one thing you need to know about this song, it’s
beautiful chaos. I’d like to just leave it there, but perhaps I should explain
my position. As soon as the song began, I immediately started dancing
(resistance is futile), and the initial melody, imitated in Brad’s vocal, is SO
catchy, it puts all those catchy country/pop tunes to shame (I’m struggling to
stop dancing along to write this review, in fact). Not that this is country/pop
however, there are still remnants of Brad’s signature style with the bluesy
distorted guitar solo which is so characteristic of his recordings. It appears
a little more erratic than normal, however, and that is a pretty apt
description for the rest of this track.

There is too much going on in the mix for me to give a kind
of laundry list like I usually do with a single, but the interplay between the
electric guitar riff and the plucky banjo loop, that fills the intro and
underlies the rest of the song is flawless, and that’s what makes the song so
addictive, fundamentally. I’m no aural genius, but to my ear the four chords
that are used sound pretty basic (which is more than can be said for some of
Brad’s tracks… C# minor anyone?), which is makes it all the more amazing that
he can make the song sound so interesting, and, on one level, a bit radical.
There is so much contrapuntal going on (lots of different melody lines and
sonic tidbits playing at the same time), that I’m shocked they’ve been able to
make it work. It’s true, there are times where it feels like certain parts are
clashing harmonically, but it’s enough to be creative without moving into the
realms of bad music.

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