Album review : JON PARDI – Honkytonk Hollywood

Capitol Records/Snakefarm [Release date : 11.04.25]

Not for nothing is Jon Pardi one of Nashville’s pre eminent country artists.

He was Inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2023, thanks to a quartet of best selling albums and numerous hit singles, including four number ones on the country charts. All in a 13 year period. Achievements that speak for themselves.

Honkytonk Hollywood is an ambitious album with plenty to say ( it runs to 17 tracks), and is perhaps his most accessible. This is classic country. Once you start you want more, and each one of the 17 tracks is a song to be proud of.

For the most part he veers off tangentially into country rock territory, with the emphasis being on good time, foot stomping grit. All delivered by an accomplished musician and lyricist. One who’s not afraid to parody his own genre with ‘She Gets To Drinking’, and who is equally at home on the dramatic ballad, ‘She Drives Away’, a father’s whispered prayer, as he is with the blue collar sentiments of ‘He Went To Work’.

The rowdy ‘Boots Off’ almost chases you out onto the dance floor, while ‘Friday Night Heartbreaker’ reaches back to the time when Joe Walsh and Jackson Browne were the names on everybody’s lips.

The public’s voracious appetite for contemporary country music may well be sated by the zillion albums that exit the Nashville conveyor belt annually. But 99% is flat-pack, self assembly stuff, constructed from identical DNA.

It’s tough to be original within such narrow parameters and Pardi reveals himself to be a writer rooted in tradition. With Honkytonk Hollywood, he amply demonstrates his refusal to be tamed by it, picking up on the classic elements of rock and country, then moulding and shaping them in his own likeness.

One of the year’s better albums, no question. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

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