The Kinda Sorta Heartbreaker

Dierks Bentley posits himself as some kind of tough-to-tame heartbreaker, but I’m dubious. Most likely he’s the type of guy who’ll hook up with you at the bar for a one-night stand, no strings attached, and still leave you a manfully cryptic note the next morning making vague allusions to “not knowing where my head’s at,” full of references to how he just has to “ramble.” Toby Keith, meanwhile, isn’t leaving town until he’s fucked your sister. That’s a heartbreaker.

As a performer and personality Bentley’s genial enough but lacks an identity outside of styling himself as a regretful Lothario and an inveterate highwayman. Long Trip Alone represents a modest drop-off in quality from Modern Day Drifter mostly because Dierks is a little more sober and lyrically vague this time around. “Soon As You Can” carries a winning pop hook and “That Don’t Make It Easy Loving Me” is rowdy and cheeky like more of Bentley’s stuff should be, but a lack of specificity or new perspectives kills several of the ballads. “It’s all one song,” Neil Young famously claimed, but for Dierks it’s the truth. I guess I respect him for not sticking his foot in his mouth politically or being a pigheaded douchebag like Brad Paisley, but his breakup songs don’t pack nearly the devastation of Gary Allan or Julie Roberts and his traveling songs don’t offer the sickness and desperation of Shooter Jennings. “Slightly rueful” and “quixotically transient” aren’t really poses that lend themselves to a broadly satisfying body of work.