The Great American Bar Scene

It's telling that it takes cameos from a pair of rock superstars -- John Mayer helps sculpt "Better Days," Bruce Springsteen haunts the corridors of "Sandpaper" -- to help pull Bryan's aspirations into focus: where the rest of the record seems caught in its own head, these tunes have a forward motion that makes the rest of The Great American Bar Scene seem relatively bereft of musical imagination.