To hear Kenny Chesney tell it, "Life on a Rock" is a placeholder between the sort of albums that made him one of the biggest country stars of the first decade of the 2000s, albums filled with churning Americana rock and lilting country-beach-bum anthems. Chesney is a superstar, the idea goes, and therefore can do what he wants.
Except when he can't, of course. This album's single, the lumpy and cheerful "Pirate Flag," sounds like it could have belonged to any Chesney album of the last few years and is one of two songs on this album on which he has no writing credit.
An example of the man holding the famously chill Chesney down, right? A forced return to his pigeonhole?
Maybe a helpful assist, actually. "Pirate Flag" has a pulse, unlike much of the rest of this album, much of which was written by Chesney, who is partial to long walks on the beach, acoustic ballads, nonlinear storytelling and lines that don't always rhyme. The results are mostly dismal, making for the sort of album that reinforces faith in big, lumbering institutions that understand starmaking.
Partnering with professional songwriters helps a bit, like on the tense and whimsical "Must Be Something I Missed": "I wake up in the morning just making a fist/I don't call it living, I just exist."
But left to his own devices, Chesney veers uncomfortably maudlin on "Happy on the Hey Now (A Song for Kristi)"; dabbles in roots reggae on "Spread the Love," featuring the Wailers and Elan; and actually titles a song "Marley," name-checking several Bob Marley songs over steel drums.
The bar Chesney reminisces about on "When I See This Bar" sounds far less interesting than the one in Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar." And "Lindy" is an accidentally condescending song about a seemingly homeless person — "No one knows his last name/ But I believe he's the salt of the earth/Just look past his dirty shirt." Worse still, it's not even the best country song about a seemingly homeless person; it's tougher to swallow than even Craig Morgan's awkward and unsettling "Almost Home."
