Quick Reviews: Zac Brown Band, Madonna, Warren Zevon

Plus the Waterboys, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere soundtrack, Kim Wilson

Zac Brown Band—Love & Fear [2025]

★★

“This album is about the duality we all carry,” claims Zac Brown in a press release accompanying Love & Fear, the Zac Brown Band’s comeback from The Comeback. ZBB’s duality can be summarized in a bit of ingenious sequencing early on the album. After bitching about saliva on his sativa on “Let It Run,” Brown pumps up the self-motivation of “Animal” with a gospel choir, who dutifully sing “I am an animal, I’m not a man” alongside a vocalist whose spirit animal is a cuddly teddy bear, no matter how hard he fights it. And, boy, does Brown fight against his natural mellow gifts throughout Love & Fear. He’ll succumb to the sentimental side that helped bring him pop hits, crooning treacly codswallop like “Thank You for Loving Her” or he’ll have his band indulge in the chops that made them a festival favorite, but they’re concessions to his audience. His heart is in hanging out with fellow stars—Dolly Parton and Snoop Dogg both make cameos; Marcus King is here for the jam band set—and creating such misshapen monstrosities as “Nothing’s a Coincidence,” an ungainly blend of inspirational pop and pompous prog. It no longer sounds like music comes easy to the Zac Brown Band, a significant blow to a band whose light, breezy touch sold the beachy vibes of “Chicken Fried” and “Toes.” Now, it’s hard to ignore how hard Zac Brown Band works, and how their leader is just plain weird in ways that only a rich musician can be.

Madonna—Bedtime Stories (The Untold Chapter) [2025; 1994]

★★★

I’ll cop to being confused by the Madonna reissue project. It was announced with great fanfare back in 2021,