Album Review: Ryan Beaver 'Rx'

Releasing May 6th, Ryan Beaver’s anticipated Rx is just the remedy you’ve been looking for. Anchored by the hopeful resilience of “Dark” and the melancholy nostalgia and idealism of “If I Had A Horse,” Rx is replete with songs that are lyrically and sonically compelling, interesting, effective, and universally relatable. Beaver, who co-wrote nine of the twelve tracks, brings insight to a myriad of emotions including sentimentality, innocence, and longing and merges them with a welcome, edgy frankness; successfully conveying sentiments to either male or female in “a-ha” moments that have you realizing he nailed it. 

With songs whose melodies compliment and carry the story, Beaver isn’t afraid to push the envelope and veer off course providing the listener with sonic surprises around every corner beginning with the tumultuous take-off of “Rum and Roses” which prepares you for the bumpy ride that is giving into temptation while knowing there will be repercussions, and possibly regret. “Some nights you just wanna feel something comfortable/and the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t.”  (Beaver draws out the “you” and the listener can sense that even though he didn’t write this Josh Osborne and Ryan Tyndell penned tune, he’s lived it.)

There’s a downright smoky, sexy grittiness to “Fast” about enjoying the ride of a relationship that’s moving in the express lane “I love the way you hate way the glass looks in your hand when it’s empty/I got just enough of a buzz to look u in the eye and say something risky…. here we go,” while sharp lyrics merge with an ominous vibe on the out and out wicked, “Gravedigger” which leaves you swirling in a psychedelic rainbow of feelings after having a number done on your heart. “I drank every drop of your poison you served it up in such a pretty cup it ought a be illegal your love's just plain evil, I swear you keep a shovel in your trunk.”

The romantic mid-tempo “When This World Ends” enamors…because who doesn’t want someone to tell them they’ll “love you til the end?” while “Habit,” which contains one of the most truthful lines on the entire record - “Why can’t love stay like it is when it’s brand new? - wraps you in an enchanting and emotional melody in a story about a female who manages to always leave. In “Vegas,” it’s the memories that won’t disappear in a sincere tug-at-the-heartstrings ballad which uses clever word play to want what happens in Sin City to perhaps last a little longer. Continuing that sentiment is "Still Yours," an immediate ear grabber with an undeniably delightful melody, the tune delivers on that all too common experience of being unable to get your mind off of someone no matter how hard you try. “I try to find some secret road, but there ain’t a street that you don’t own.”

A few acoustic lines of Kristofferson’s “Jesus Was A Capricorn” blend seamlessly into “Kristofferson” (the two are in the same key) which pays homage to the icon while also tipping its hat to all of the songwriters trying to do their thing. Rx is rounded out by the devastatingly honest title track, that’s all at once powerful, ruminative and wrenching. “Fools like me they just can’t help, to try to find holy water in a whiskey well/It takes a little more medicine than it used to take/It takes a little more of the highs to chase the lows away/It takes a little more of the night to make it through the day.”

Beaver has said that he titled the album Rx because the songs are like medicine to him, but what he provides in Rx is a musical balm for anyone's soul...and one of the best albums of 2016 thus far.

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