Mitchell Tenpenny first made a splash with "Drunk Me," a clever heartbreak tale that found its narrator realizing the only way he could get over a relationship was to stop drinking. "Drunk Me" found a companion in "Alcohol You Later," another sly song tracing how romance and spirits are intertwined. These two songs -- both pulled as the first singles from
Telling All My Secrets,
Tenpenny's 2018 major-label debut -- suggest that booze hangs heavily over their accompanying album and it does, although you'd never know it from the light feel of the music. Slick and soulful, containing as many electronic flairs as allusions to old-school R&B,
Telling All My Secrets is steeped in the revolutions
Sam Hunt ushered in with his 2014 album
Montevallo. Unlike
Hunt or such similarly minded peers as
Thomas Rhett,
Tenpenny isn't a loverman. He'll sing about romances, but it's usually shaded with heartbreak, a bittersweet undercurrent that's accentuated by its nostalgic opener "Truck I Drove in High School."
Tenpenny's songs may be tinged with melancholy but the vibe of
Telling All My Secrets is cozy and comforting. His voice, soft but not supple, glides along rhythms that are informed by hip-hop without quite swinging and eases into candied settings designed to appeal outside of the confines of contemporary country. Such stylistic evasiveness is part of the game in the waning days of the 2010s and
Tenpenny's persona -- an amiable country guy living in the city -- adapts to all these variations well, which makes
Telling All My Secrets play a bit like a hot country station: it hits all the expected marks in a pleasant, professional fashion. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine