Butch Walker Fills ‘Butch Walker As… Glenn’ with Hook-filled, Smartly Written Pop Tunes (ALBUM REVIEW)

Butch Walker is one of the few musicians working today that can get away with an album as quirky as Butch Walker As… Glenn, an ode to the barroom piano player. It helps that the record is brilliantly executed. 

For the past couple of decades, Walker has been Pink’s go-to producer, as well as producing for Taylor Swift, Green Day, Weezer and Jewel among many others. He’s written songs for everyone from Fall Out Boy to Frank Turner and that doesn’t even get into his own music. Walker was the frontman for one of the last great ‘90s power pop/alt rock bands Marvelous Three and has built a loyal cult following across nine solo albums. His latest, will do nothing to thin that cult as it’s crammed with the same hook-filled smartly written literate pop tunes that have become Walker’s trademark.

You can hear everyone from Elton John and Billy Joel to early Tom Waits and Warren Zevon on Butch Walker As… Glenn. Though there is a timeless quality to the songs here, there are hints of the 1970s weaved throughout, like on the Jackson Browne worthy “Roll Away (Like a Stone)”. He also includes several different character-heavy songs here – another Walker trademark.

Overall, it’s yet another mostly remarkable album from Walker but there are admittedly a couple of weaker tracks here – specifically the duet “Stateline Fireworks,” which seems a little out of place here and the plodding “Slow Leak,” which kills a little of the momentum here. The set, complete with a “tip your waitstaff” intro is meant to sound like the live soundtrack to a piano player club act, includes a 45 second bar fight to split up the album (aptly titled “Bar Fight”).

All momentum is quickly brough back up to speed on the rambunctious “Tell Me I’m Pretty (Bethamphetamine Pt. 2)” one of the few guitar-heavy tracks here. And as fun as raucous moments like that are, it’s a song like “Holy Water Hangover,” the first single and easily one of the most addictively catchy songs Walker has ever written, that makes this album a need to own.  

As fun as it is eccentric, Butch Walker As… Glenn is a record that no one was really asking for, but so thankful it was made.