Album of the month: Zac Brown Band - Jekyll + Hyde

I love the Zac Brown Band. The first time I heard them, we were at a camp site, and while the neighbours were trying to set up their tents, they had ZBB's first major label album "The Foundation" playing. The island sound of their songs made me want to put my toes in the water and ass in the sand.

Their following albums were on repeat in our vehicle until Jekyll + Hyde came out.

The first day this album was released, I had high hopes, so I streamed it as soon as I could. My first reaction to the first 10-30 seconds were something along the lines of "No, no, noo! What have you done?". The first song on the album is "Beautiful drug", a pop/EDM-type song, featuring autotune. I love it when artists explore other genres (Darius Rucker makes a great country artist, I think), but Zac Brown auto-tuned is not exactly my cup of tea.

To give it the benefit of the doubt, I sat through the whole song, hoping the rest would be better, and I was pleasantly surprised.

On this album, ZBB explores genres from EDM/Pop on Beautiful drug to crooning with Sara Bareilles on Mango tree and rocking it out with Chris Cornell (Audioslave/Soundgarden) on Heavy is the head. And then there's the song for one or all of his daughters: I'll be your man (Song for a daughter), which is likely to pull some heart-strings of dads with daughters... like myself.

Some people might say ZBB is trying hard to please everybody, but I'm sure the band knows very well that that's an impossible task, especially in music.

Overall this album is very pleasant to listen to and has a song for a lot of moods.

That's why JEKYLL + HYDE by the Zac Brown Band is album of the month.

Buy the vinyl record of JEKYLL + HYDE by the Zac Brown Band now.