The prolific Luke Combs releases a fourth album in six years and reaffirms his desire not to think outside the box.
We saw Luke Combs in a packed Bell Center last fall. Not bad, but not quite living up to its popularity south of the border. His Saturday concert, he gives a more accurate image: he will sing at the AT
How did he reach this peak? He himself still wonders, in 5 Leaf Clover, one of Gettin’ Old’s 18 songs: “How does a guy like me end up with a five-leaf clover, when he would have settled for three? “, he sings, in his gravelly voice, on a country rock music anchored in the 1990s and embellished with violin.
Luke Combs never breaks his head. His music is predictable and he has a penchant for power ballads. And he sings the same things as everyone else: he talks about beer, about broken hearts, about his admiration for his father, about the passage of time, about progress going too fast, about his pickup truck and the boys. And if he sometimes finds turns that make beautiful images, he is often very literal.
What is his secret, then? He doesn’t just stay on the beaten track, he deeply embodies that stability. Without purely artistic ambition or arrogance. His talent as an interpreter does most of the work. This is obvious on Fast Car, the superb song by Tracy Chapman which he brilliantly covers. Luke Combs is an inhabited singer. And that’s enough.
