DALTON DOVER - Here's The Deal - Mercury Records Nashville

Since breaking onto the country music scene with “Giving Up On That,” Dalton Dover has continued to layer his resume with songs that have allowed his remarkable voice to take center stage while also craftily giving a nod to his 90’s country influences within his fresh, modern sound.

Following his latest honky-tonk barnburner, “Bury Me In This Bar,” the Aragon, Georgia native now delivers an appreciative nod to his hometown on his latest effort, “Here’s The Deal.”

“When I first heard ‘Here’s The Deal,’ I immediately knew I wanted to cut it. It’s the perfect song to pay tribute to the place where my journey began and a place that will always be a part of my story,” shares Dover. “Growing up in Aragon and still living there is such a big part of my identity, along with the people there who make it special. This song is for them, but it’s also for anyone who appreciates where they’re from.”

The song, written by Michael Hardy, Chase McGill and Matt Dragstrem, places its soft melodic flow into the addictive, pop laden backbeat as Dover’s voice walks the pocket of emotions embedded within the lyrics, balancing the heartbeat paced feelings of finding the perfect girl while struggling with that one thing that makes the situation not quite as perfect as it ought to be.

With her wild child spirit leading her way out of Small Town, USA, the opening verse sees her pleading with him to come along with her to the big city as he battles the internal welling between what could be and what never will, landing at an ultimatum in the second verse, “It's either me or a concrete tower.”

Lifting the melody into the grind of the chorus, Dalton moves line by line through country boy descriptives that paint the picture of who he is and the deeply seated reasons he can’t just up and leave the life (and place) he knows like the back of his hand, even if that means losing her to stay boot rooted in the familiar farm dirt.

“But here's the deal, these fields of gold

Run through my veins like a river rolls

Everything I know, everything I am

Comes from this dirt, girl, and I'll be damned

If I leave it all in my rearview

I'll be letting down my daddy and his daddy too

I know you want a house on a hill and I'm building it now

But girl, settling down now, here's the deal”

The bridge intriguingly sees him tilting into the raw edges of his otherwise very smooth vocal to painfully express his needs versus hers, knowing that they need to go their separate ways if they’re ever going to be who they’re meant to be while also now navigating the impending heartbreak that’s sitting on the near horizon.

With each next song that Dalton Dover puts out, he adds definition to the layers of his signature sound while revealing more and more pieces of who he is at his core. “Here’s The Deal” now continues that trend as we fit into place the next puzzle piece of one of country music’s most endearing risers. 

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

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