Beer's Better Cold, the debut EP from country singer
Travis Denning, isn't billed as concept record, but with song after song about beer and alcohol, it effectively plays that way.
Denning begins the EP claiming he doesn't know "Where That Beer's Been," but he knows where it's going -- "down the hatch, to my brain, til I don't know my last name." After this ode to the pleasures of blackout drinking,
Denning unveils his first hit single, "After a Few," where he and an ex hook up after one too many drinks. After a brief respite for the cute "ABBY," where he gets over an old lover with "Any Body But You," he's set adrift on memory bliss by sipping Bud Light on "Tank of Gas and a Radio Song." By the time he gets around to the title track, where "Beer's Better Cold" is just an accepted fact of life, it's hard not to feel the hangover settle in, so perhaps it's best that the six-song EP ends on the quiet romantic note of "Sittin' by a Fire," since it finally shows that
Denning can do something other than swill tall boys. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine