Kenny Chesney is vacationing on a tropical island for his new album Lucky Old Sun. The inside, would-be gatefold cover shows a photo of him sitting on the beach playing the guitar, with palm trees and an improbably perfect sunset behind him. The back cover shows Chesneyâs fishing boat in the water, and on the beach his chair — the old blue chair of his similarly themed 2005 album Be As You Are (Songs From an Old Blue Chair). This is a âbeach albumâ, but a particularly dour one. Here the beach is not about non-stop fun in the sun. Itâs a place to take your earthly troubles and, hopefully, let them wash away with the tide. Or as Chesney puts it on the second song, âWay Down Hereâ, âif Iâm gonna be down / gonna be down / way down here.â
The problems Chesney, or his protagonist, is running away from are barely spelled out, though heâs publicly talked about this album being about his brief marriage to actress Renee Zellweger. The most specific lyrics, like one on âBoatsâ where a man says goodbye to his wife with the line âitâs been real but it ainât been funâ, startle a bit, since mostly he goes for a general sense of being down in the dumps, a general mood of brooding.
The sentiment that opens the LP, on a song that Willie Nelson also finely sang on the 2008 Buddy Cannon/Kenny Chesney-produced Moment of Forever album, is âat least Iâm alive, thatâs all that mattersâ. It sounds like heâs trying to convince himself. The musicâs feeling isnât realized contentment but uncertainty. The most sure line, one that represents the albumâs reached-for theme, is sung not by Chesney but by guest Dave Matthews: âitâs good for the soul / when thereâs not a soul in sight.â
Even the songs that are most about living the easy island life feel unsettled, even anxious. In âThe Lifeâ, Chesney admires the easy-going life of Jose, a Mexican fisherman, who doesnât have to worry about things like buying a big house or trying to stay atop the Billboard charts. The most prominent character in the song is the idealized Jose, but the dominant viewpoint is envy, rooted in personal dissatisfaction.
The songs with the most specific island references are really about Chesney and his wish for a change, more than the setting. Along with âThe Lifeâ, thereâs âKeys in the Conch Shellâ, an overtly Jimmy Buffett-esque number where Chesney has his own place on an island but never has the time to actually be there. On âBoatsâ heâs obsessed with, of course, boats, but really itâs with what they represent, inartfully put like this in the chorus: âboats / vessels of freedom / harbors of healing / boats.â
Many of Chesneyâs big hits and best songs have projected a sense of ease, in performance or content: think âNo Shoes, No Shirt, No Serviceâ. The sound of this album is ease (check out that easy-listening sax solo during âWay Down Hereâ, a soft-pop ballad), but the songs are filled with a general sense of the opposite. Two of the best songs musically go furthest to project absolute, un-fussy ease, even though the characters are not necessarily at rest. The success of âDown the Roadâ, written by Mac McAnally, comes perhaps partly because it altogether exits the islands and Chesneyâs quest for post-love peace (his Forgetting Sarah Marshall plot line), for a tale of young lovers and their cautious parents. In the context of Lucky Old Sun, itâs a mental trip backwards in time, nostalgic about love; a dream of an alternate life that sounds dreamy enough itself. Dreamy too is âSpirit of a Stormâ, a tale of inner turmoil and the search for âpeace of mindâ that in tone more clearly resembles a momentary sense of peace, healing but sure to pass. The tone of it is almost somnambulistic. Heâs walking asleep, ready to hibernate under the sun. Similar is his duet with Willie Nelson on the standard âThat Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)â, where the emphasis is on the wish of having nothing to do, like the sun, instead of on the toil of the working man whoâs singing the song.
The near-sleep feeling of these songs could easily be equated to dull-ness, but itâs instead a very particular feeling, Chesneyâs own distinct slant on âisland livingâ. Still, the songs with the most overt âisland soundâ — steel drums, for example — are obvious attempts to liven, and lighten, the album up. âTen With a Twoâ, a one-night-stand song built on wordplay (waking up at 10 am with a woman whoâs a â2â, though she looked like a â10â at 2 am), is meant to be fun. But Chesney has too much gravity or sleep in his voice. He sounds almost like a zombie, weighed down not just by the horn section but by something bigger, maybe the burden of living up to the ideal of the island: the vacationerâs quandary. The songâs out-of-fashion sexual politics in the context of a post-break-up album begs for some deeper analysis, but as a liven-things-up track it doesnât do the job.
As a beach album, Lucky Old Sun is remarkably little fun. The closest to fun may be the first single, âEverybody Wants to Go to Heavenâ, with the Wailers. Yet this fun is more like a lazy late-night beachfront campfire jam, the Wailers unrecognizable from the other jammers in the dark. The ânot todayâ sentiment that concludes the title pairs up perhaps well with âJust Not Todayâ, off his last album Just Who I Am. But that song had the structure and emotional hook of a great radio single, more than this one. (Similarly, no song on this album exemplifies escape from everyday drudgery as well as that albumâs George Strait duet âShiftworkâ.) Both songs take that âlive life to the fullest while youâve got the chanceâ angle, though on Lucky Old Sun he mostly seems ready to slip away from life. Chesneyâs version of island living seems mostly about going where no one knows his name, where thereâs no pressure. Itâs about vacationing in his own head, trying to figure himself out. Or as one song title phrases it, of trying to attain the status of having âNowhere to Go, Nowhere to Beâ. Of disappearingâŚ