Luke Bryan Born Here Live Here Die Here (2-LP, Deluxe Edition, colored Vinyl)

(Capitol Records Nashville) 16 tracks, colored vinyl in blue.

Luke Bryan is the epitome of a debonair contemporary country superstar. He began his rise as an amiable ambassador of country identity in the late 2000s, a few years before the format's turn toward beat-driven productions and hip-hop swagger, and adapted to those trends so successfully that his folksy party tunes dominated the country charts in the 2010s. Now, with his seventh studio album, Born Here Live Here Die Here, Bryan is on the other end of that evolution, making yet another shift. He still leaves plenty of room for pop music with bite in tracks like What She Wants Tonight, with its shiny hook; One Margarita, with its breezy beach cadence and subtle metal effects; and Down to One, whose romantic nostalgia is layered with icy synths and glassy guitar tones.

But he's focused the set on slightly more seasoned viewpoints and tried-and-true sounds, like a galloping, orchestrated singer-songwriter-style reunion with an old love (Where Are We Goin), a slice of Tex-Mex-tinged, wounded '90s honky-tonk bravado (Little Less Broken) and a sentimental tale about a kid coping with the loss of his fallen soldier father (Build Me a Daddy). On the title track, Bryan elevates a simple country sentiment that runs like a thread through his work - the search for meaning in the stability of a small town - to a grand gesture that swells into a credo in the chorus: Yeah, I'm gonna be proud to be right here.