Dierks Bentley takes the No. 1 position this week on Billboard’s Country Albums chart with his sixth studio album HOME, marking Bentley’s fourth career debut in the top spot. The new album’s poignant second single and title track also continues to climb into the Top 5 at radio and has already spawned the rowdy chart-topper “Am I The Only One.”
Music critics across the country are weighing in with glowing reviews of HOME all focused around one central theme – Bentley’s unique sound that combines his distinctive gravely vocals with a modern blend of acoustic and electric instruments. Entertainment Weekly awarded that sound an A.
“Bentley has always been a big-picture guy, looking to pull together the different kinds of music he loves. On what may be his most cohesive album, he combines rustic sounds of crisp banjo and mandolin with a surging beat that falls between U2 and Waylon Jennings.” – USA Today
“Bentley always utilizes banjo, fiddle, mandolin and especially dobro in his music, but with a modern beat and energy that, along with his distinctive voice, gives him a compelling sound of his own.” – Associated Press
“Dierks Bentley’s new album is his most assured…like an actor playing a role, great country singers inhabit their songs and make them sound like they’re living it all right before your ears. When it works, it feels Oscar-worthy… Dierks Bentley is a great country singer.” – Washington Post
“Home is packed with songs that showcase Bentley as a vocalist and that will feed his energy as a performer on stage.” – Tennessean
“It’s Bentley at his country-mainstream best.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
“Dierks Bentley has recorded what is undoubtedly the finest album of his career.” – CMT
“It leaves you the listener with the impression that Bentley has made something special here, not just his most consistent album and 2012’s first great country album, but a work that reminds us of the separate power that individual songs can have when they’re strategically placed together on an album.” – PopMatters
Bentley will perform a song off the new album today on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and is set for the first show of his 2012 COUNTRY & COLD CANS Tour tonight in Vancouver, BC Canada. For a list of upcoming appearances and tour dates in Canada, Australia and the US, visit www.dierks.com.
AUDIO: Dierks Bentley says his new album, Home, combines a variety of diverse songs that reflect who he is in a musical sense.
Dierks (diversity of songs) OC: …musically. :28
“What’s cool about this record, and one thing I try to capture on it is a diversity of the music, but it all falls within the confines of who I am as a country singer as far as loving the country sounds, the bluegrass sounds, loving some of the rock sounds and energy and mixing it all together on a record. I think it’s all there, so I think there’s a diversity of subject matter and sounds but in a way that it all kind of gels together pretty well, and it’s a good description of who I am musically.”
