GRAHAM BARHAM - M.I.A. - Sony Music Nashville/Disrupter Records

While “BREAK IT IN A BAR” put rising superstar Graham Barham on the radar in BIG ways, these past 8 months have intriguingly seen him redefining his overall sound into something freshly modern that stretches the genre lines while blurring pop laden essence, modern country ideals, and uniquely distinctive flavors that make him who he is.

Where “BAYOU BOY” dripped a swampy backwoods swagger into an autobiographically twisted introduction, songs like “WHISKEY WHISKEY” and “SHOOT THE LOCK” unapologetically pushed addictive backbeats to the forefront to induce a club like, strobe lit flash into a next generation sound.

Likewise, his newest release “M.I.A.” continues to carry a confident fusion of loops, dubs, and irresistible backbeats into a progressive style as he raises one up within a masking of a broken hearted, missing her confession that begs to question his current truths:

“Am I, am I crazy? Am I, am I wrong?

Am I the only one here sipping something strong

Thinking, "Am I, am I broken? Will I be okay?"

'Cause I done lost my mind every night since she went

M.I., M.I.A.”

Admitting through each of the verses that he’s only at the bar so that he doesn’t have to drink alone and that he’s bending his heartbreak with shots of whiskey, he seeks to find his comfort in trying to understand where the one who got away has been hiding since the day that she went missing and has never come back around to him.

Map dotting her “missing person” status, his mind goes into tortuous overdrive wondering if she headed out West to the Rockies or if Los Angeles came calling and she called them back. However, it’s within his extreme denial that never allows him to admit his own faults as to why she left him that he strikes the strongest connectivity with the listening audience.

In the aftermath of a break-up, we’ll often seek vices to mask our hurts rather than face the reflective mirror to admit to ourselves that we were the root cause of our own current pains, selfishly pointing the finger at everyone other than where it needs to be pointed. Barham hits hard on this hard to swallow truth!

With the ebbs and flows of his distinguishable vocal leading the rhythm around an ultra-modern flow that finds unexpected shifts in its melodic output, Graham Barham delivers a next level banger with “M.I.A.” that captivates with each next beat as the overall atmosphere swarms your senses and holds you tightly in its grip.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)