At the peak of any artist’s commercial power, you can usually tell when the market for their creative wares is a bit oversaturated, and the industry has overestimated demand for that one thing. It’s the up-and-coming artists whose sole creative motivation is to do what the big dogs are doing.
We saw it with Florida Georgia Line and their carefree machismo, which birthed the careers of Dustin Lynch and Dylan Scott, who have both publicly speculated about why they haven’t been able to take the “next step” into superstardom. You saw it in the 90s when just about every newcomer for over half a decade was copping Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson’s style.
Similarly, in 2026, Dylan Gossett’s continued presence as a mid-tier in country music represents the demand for Zach Bryan’s folky heartland rock sound reaching critical mass.
The key issue with Ramblin’ is that it fails to address any of Westward’s flaws, making it a much more frustrating listen overall. This is no longer a young artist finding his voice, for whom we can reasonably excuse some clunky songwriting and derivative production; Gossett seems to have settled comfortably into his mediocre bag in both respects and shows no interest in challenging himself creatively.
Last year, my central critique of Westward was its writing. Most of the time, you got the impression that Gossett was trying to express something profound and poetic, but was trying too hard to sound that way. He clearly has the chops as a vocalist, but lacks Zach Bryan’s imaginative knack for putting his feelings to paper.
But unlike that record, where there were at least some interesting conceptual through-lines you could point to, Ramblin’ is a blasé collection of, well, ramblings.
No remarkable insights, emotional gut-punches, just a bunch of nice-sounding songs that are far less deep than their writer would have you believe.
The album’s title track is pretty emblematic of its half-baked nature. Lines like “ain’t no rambling man oughta cause all this pain, listen to the wind, it calls me by name” epitomize much of the mush-mouthed, nothing-blather we get here.
In lieu of thoughtful storycraft, lines like this serve as flimsy stand-ins, invoking sensible questions like “what pain? Who is this character and why is he “rambling? What’s the point of this story anyway?”
This record is littered with similar cases; for all the sappy love songs he offers throughout this tracklist, you don’t get any professions of devotion that stop you in your tracks. Instead, it’s a lot of hammy declarations like “We see the world now, but you still feel like home, so let me hold you ‘til the trees turn into stone.”
Once again, you get the idea of what Gossett’s going for, but the execution is still onerously poor. In the end, you feel like he’s throwing together assorted words that rhyme to convey a general meaning, and pretty much leaving it at that.
To his credit, the production on this record does sound good overall. Embodying the eponymous “rambling” spirit, the plucky major-chord sequences are smooth and euphoric, driving down a scenic highway or something.
As you may have gathered, the problem is that none of them take that next step to truly remarkable productions, reducing them to empty vessels that would’ve been ideal backdrops for better writing.
In just about every way, each song blends into the one before it. They’re all acoustically based folk jams with more rhythm than melody, and a vague smattering of lyrics about being left behind, growing up, or other topics that more capable songwriters have covered more thoughtfully.
Unlike Zach Bryan’s other contemporaries, these tracks rarely feel grounded in the real human experience of their narrator.
Wyatt Flores is a self-conscious screw-up; Sam Barber is a would-be poet wise beyond his years. Charles Wesley Godwin is a father finding his way in the world. The question of “what is Dylan Gossett all about?” still has yet to be answered two albums in. Not a good thing for a fairly established young artist!
And perhaps most damaging of all, unlike those artists, pretty much any vocalist could convincingly sing these songs. Even at their worst, you can’t separate Wyatt, Charles, or even Sam, from their body of work and pass it off as someone else’s. Right now, though he has the pipes of a folk balladeer, Dylan Gossett isn’t bringing the substance.
Westward was already a fairly thin lyrical offering, bolstered by his gutsy baritone voice; at best, Ramblin’ is more of the same; at worst, you could almost read it as Dylan Gossett doing a rushed, sloppy impression of himself.
