Telling All My Secrets

Mitchell Tenpenny has a few things to get off his chest, and he’s using some liquid courage to help him open up. Telling All My Secrets is the Nashville singer’s major-label debut, and if there’s one thing that he’s not hiding, it’s his love of the bottle. On “Drunk Me,” the album’s lead single, Tenpenny starts out metaphorically sloshed (“There ain’t no hangover like you”) before quite literally drunk-dialing an ex. “Alcohol You Later” draws a second swig from the same well. Even the romantic balladry leans on boozy phrases that might not actually be metaphors (“Got me taking shots I don’t take, but she likes Bacardi” in “Chance Worth Taking”). His sassy, country-rock style owes much to hard-partying Nashville outsiders like David Allan Coe and the incorrigible Hank Williams, Jr., but the better comparison may be to Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett: For Tenpenny, it’s always 5:00 somewhere.