Photo Credit: Ashley Osborn

In recent years, two distinct roads have emerged in the country music landscape. That less traveled is occupied by the likes of Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, The Highwomen, and Jess Williamson. These are singers who embody country’s music original promise – of heartfelt, homespun, hugely evocative songs – while updating the genre’s themes and presentation to reflect the diversity and complexity of the modern day. Then there are those taking the road more traveled – bro-country chart-toppers like Morgan Wallen and Sam Hunt who still sing of little more than whiskey, trucks, and lusting after women while setting such themes against big-budget, soulless production, and awkward genre fusions. 

You sense that 38-year-old Jason Bradley DeFord – professionally known as Jelly Roll – could join the former category, but on his second major label LP, he largely falls into the latter. Opener “Halfway To Hell” certainly isn’t half as bad as some of what’s been coming out of Nashville recently – it doesn’t reach the same nadirs that Hunt’s “Body Like A Back Road” or Walker Hayes’ “AA.” Although within its very first moments, it showcases the faults that drag down Whitsitt Chapel. DeFord attempts an awkward fusion of rapping and traditional country delivery while declaring himself to be “a bottle and a Bible” – a line that feels like a surrender to, rather than an interrogation of, clichéd country tropes. However, the song’s worst sin, like with so many other tracks here, is its failure to complement DeFord’s booming and compelling voice. The production is so loud and overbearing that it makes the 38-year-old’s impressive voice sound merely ordinary. 

All of Whitsitt Chapel’s central themes are laid out in that opening track – those being that: life is hard, whiskey is good and so is God. Across the following tracks, DeFord finds countless other ways to express these truths, while simultaneously finding nothing new of substance to say about them. “Church,” at least, has a semi-interesting concept – about finding God on the road listening to the radio. It even has a clever one-liner (“There ain’t no back pew in this truck, so I’m forced to sit in the front”). But in its overbearing sound, the verses, chorus, and bridge all blur into an overly-polished mess. Besides, it doesn’t help that Maren Morris already explored these themes extensively on 2016’s far superior “My Church.”

Jelly Roll finally got his big break earlier this decade with the surprise hit “Son Of A Sinner,” and while not free of fault, that song clearly exceeds any track of the singer-songwriter’s newest full-length. Relatively subdued compared to most of Whitsitt Chapel, it highlights both the power of DeFord’s voice, as well as the cracks that appear in it during his most vulnerable and human moments. It also contains lyrical intimacies like, “I took the rearview off of this old Ford so I only see in front of me // Now the past is out of sight and out of mind,” that transcended the predictable clichés that populate his 2023 LP. 

There are moments here where DeFord seems capable of replicating “Son Of A Sinner”’s charm, but he never quite sticks the landing. At the start of “The Lost,” he condemns the fire-and-brimstone signs that pop up across much of deep-red America (“you can’t scare me to Heaven”), but what could have been a compelling examination of his religion’s excesses ultimately ends up as another song about “weed smokin’, syrup sippin’, and whiskey.” The album’s best song, “Behind Bars,” features guest vocals from Brantley Gilbert and Struggle Jennings; whose vocals channel real communal warmth. This is one of the rare moments where DeFord seems meaningfully in touch with the heart and soul of country music at its best. Outside of this, you’ll probably need to consume the intense quantities of alcohol DeFord sings about to enjoy this album.

Written by: Tom Williams