Review Summary: The lesser half of Florida Georgia Line proves why he was always second banana.
Someone is going to need to explain to me why so many of these listlessly dull male country artists feel compelled to try their hands at Kenny Chesney and Jimmy Buffett's nautical island vibes. Being a door-busting vocalist isn't necessarily a prerequisite, but it'd be nice if one of these dullards had
some pipes or range, or could be bothered to add any color to their performance. Brian Kelley, one half of the polarizing duo Florida Georgia Line, is not a bad singer, and he's certainly more listenable than whatever the f*ck that Tucker Wetmore garbage was that we suffered through a few weeks ago, but damn it is his voice just so plain and limited. It firmly reinforces that Tyler Hubbard was what made the group, even if he can be an irritating listen in his own right.
"Palms and Pines," the opening track to Kelley's latest solo album
Coral Beats, is evidence of this harsh reality. Again, he's not going to walk out with a tail between his legs for completely laying an egg, but his uninspired demeanor adds nothing to a bare-bones composition that's already lacking in substance. Its boring, painfully familiar and instantly forgettable. Sh*t, your mind drifts elsewhere as its playing. This much can be said for every infernal second of this inane dross that has about as much life as Mitch McConnell's mortuary chamber. It gets whiter than Casper's taint on the vomitous "1000 Islands," where Kelley's singing is as dreadful as the production is pretentious. The nakedly titled "Jimmy Buffett Summer" (which also namedrops Chesney), faceplants hilariously in its efforts to ape "Margaritaville," making for an awkwardly unoriginal mess. The artificial palm trees at Home Depot are more tropical and exotic than this musical abomination.
Do I actively seek this sh*t out expecting it to take years off my life? Yes. Is it cathartic to lambast it to high heaven? Also yes. Florida Georgia Line is set to return to the studio in the near future, following years of both men releasing solo projects where we even saw Kelley ostensibly take shots at Hubbard, fueling speculation that their split was personal as much as it was professional. Assuming any potential tension has been smoothed over, it'll be morbidly interesting to see what, if any, lane they can carve for themselves in a country landscape that's largely left them behind. They 'pioneered' (term used loosely) the bro-country phenomena in the early '10s, and while we're still recovering, the meta looks a lot different than it did then. And theirs is most certainly not a brand of pop-country that can be realistically be modified or retooled to keep up, at least not when you're as bereft of artistic merit as these two coconut heads. For Kelley's part, his solo work is proof that FGL, as a collective or otherwise, should stay buried.
Coral Beats, with its obvious AI slop album art, is
awful.
