Review: Zach Bryan — With Heaven on Top

 Zach Bryan
With Heaven on Top
Warner Records
Street: 01.09.2026
Zach Bryan = Tyler Childers x Noah Kahan

In the course of seven — now eight — studio albums, Oklahoman singer-songwriter Zach Bryan has created a reputation for himself. Namely, for his lyricism, which is luscious, raw and gritty. It holds back no punches. His instrumental arrangements and production are always feather-light, just enough to carry the heavy, thoughtful words that Bryan sings. 

He can wax poetic about nostalgia and resentment and perfection — about fame and mistakes and family — and it always hits just right.  This is no different on With Heaven on Top, a behemoth of an album at 25 songs — in fact, it might be his most lyrically-dense record to date. 

Nothing makes Bryan’s penchant for words clearer than when he opens his albums with a spoken word poem. In “Down, Down, Stream,” Bryan tells a story of watching life wash down stream from him, alongside his dog  Jack, the picturesque image of the two captured as the album’s cover. 

From there, Bryan ushers us into the album quietly, serenely with “Runny Eggs,” a song that is full of studio chatter, anchored by the comforting and steady thrum of a harmonica. It’s also the first mention of a theme that is present across the album: home. “But no matter where I go, I pray to always find home,” Bryan sings. 

Throughout With Heaven On Top, Bryan constantly chases home, the idea of it, as a place, as a person, but perhaps most persistently as a state of being. He’s simultaneously running away from it and being pulled toward it. 

“If They Come Lookin’” perfectly captures this juxtaposition: a song where Bryan sings about being on the run, not from someone or something, but himself and his own mind, wishing he was home. A few songs later, “You Can Still Come Home” is not just a reminder, but a promise. “But you always got these times to get you by when times are low,” Bryan sings. “Miles” is an ode to the long, long journey back home.

This album also confronts other obstacles in Bryan’s life, from managing fame in “Appetite” to the things we inherit from our parents, for better or worse, in the achingly thoughtful “DeAnn’s Denim.” 

The record, in a way, is Bryan’s messiest. He’s all over the place:  in the perfect way. He oscillates between gentle, soft songwriting and songs that are upbeat, with beat-driven verses. He is fed up. He’s on top of the world. He’s tired. He’s wide awake. He’s content until he’s not. He’s never sitting still long enough to process any of this.

In “Say Why,” by the time he hits the end of the second verse, the words are shaking as he sings them. “Santa Fe” has the most upbeat production across the album, a beautiful symphony of instruments, with lyrics that still buoy the listener in the everydayness of life: “Grown so weary of all of this, every day is a precipice.” 

Even “Drowning” and “Skin,” the two more romantic songs on the album, have a defeated, unsatisfied quality to them. On  “All Good Things Past,” he sings: “Nostalgia has  a way of lookin’ better in your head.”

Still, perhaps what Bryan has done in this album is seamlessly capture the everyday highs and lows of life. The deliberate messiness, the balancing and figuring out of emotions, of priorities, makes for an album that might not be easy to grapple with, but leads to a lot of pondering. Is the past better than what will come? How does one keep on keeping on? Are the fleeting moments of satisfaction enough to anchor you, when life’s eternal dissatisfactions are constantly knocking on the door?

The answer comes in the final and title track of the album, where Bryan sings, “You won’t find no answers safe at home / you can’t learn heartbreak from a poem / and every hard time, song rhyme, friend you’ve got, you’ll have with heaven on top.” 

On With Heaven on Top, Zach Bryan is contradictory. He’s messy. He’s real. He’s constantly running from himself, and he’s trying, like all of us, to figure it all out.  He’s on a relentless pursuit of peace, with only words to make sense of it all. And because of that, this might be his deepest body of work yet. —Palak Jayswal

Read more album reviews by Palak Jayswal:
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Review: LANY — Soft