‘Broken Branches’ offers safe, familiar, cold beer country

Nashville hitmaker Dierks Bentley has delivered “Broken Branches,” his eleventh studio album that leans into some well-tread country rock territory, the kind that invariably involves broken hearts, trucks and a cold beer.

Look, Bentley knows what he’s doing. The album is 11-tracks of catchy, country rock radio filler and there’s not much mystery to its musical roadmap. But therein lies his calling card: Dependable songs with few rough edges.

Thematically, many of the tracks on the superstar’s latest effort hint at internal struggles, but allow Bentley and the listener to escape them unscathed. “Jesus Loves Me” is an admirable acoustic slow burn about finding religion but losing a woman. “Thought maybe if I hit my knees / She’d think about hitting the brakes,” Bentley sings. There is slight salvation for the Phoenix-born singer: “Yeah, Jesus loves me / But she don’t.”

On the title track, the jukebox stomp “Broken Branches,” Bentley gets a nice assist from fellow country hitmakers John Anderson and Riley Green. Ostensibly it’s an energetic drinking song about family lines, but lyrics like “We shoulda gone to college / Coulda gained a little knowledge,” which pull from a popular childhood rhyme, feel like they’re underperforming.

What Bentley does extremely well is execute what his — and the modern genre’s — biggest fans might expect. Tales of a tough exterior with a warm, if fragile, heart underneath. But his familiar is derivative.

Palatable country is how you get on the radio and stay on it. Songs about beer and trucks are Spotify deliverables. If you like your country artists with a longer rap sheet, you’ll need to look further than “Broken Branches.” Even the few attempts at invention don’t totally land, like the rowdy, rocking “She Hates Me,” which includes a surprising interpolation of post-grunge band Puddle of Mudd’s 2001 hit “She (Expletive) Hates Me.”

If there’s a pleasant find here, it’s Stephen Wilson Jr. duetting with Bentley on the opening track, “Cold Beer Can.” It’s the most memorable song on the album — with its plucky instrumentation and ascendant chorus, which showcase Wilson Jr.’s rich voice and guitar talents.

It also does what Bentley aims for, but misses, throughout the record: It addresses life’s touching moments over brews. MDT/AP