From the first sip of Dos Equis in the title track, Anything Goes (**½ out of four), the second album from Florida Georgia Line, operates with a slight buzz. It may come from a joint, from a glass of 7 and 7 or from the persistent electronic hum of hyper-tuned vocals, but it’s always present, fueling a hook-laden party album that’s equal parts country and R&B, with rock guitars as occasional garnish.
In fact, if someone tried to throw back drinks as often as Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley sing about them during the 41 minutes of Anything Goes, they’d likely wind up with alcohol poisoning.
Flush with the success of Cruise, the most-downloaded single in country music history, and a 2012 double-platinum debut album, Florida Georgia Line expand their music beyond consequence-free revelry, encompassing both the pull of a plot of land in first single Dirt and Every Night’s blend of bluegrass stomp and EDM pulse.
The songs on Anything Goes boast the kind of supreme confidence that often accompanies a few stiff ones, a quality that some will find irresistibly appealing and others will consider insufferably annoying. There’s an air of invincibility to them, the kind that probably made lyrics like “Got on my smell-good, got a bottle of feel-good/ Shine up my wheels good, you’re lookin’ real good” feel more clever than they actually are.
Even when they’re not singing specifically about mixing Jack Daniel’s and Coke and getting stoned, as they do on Sun Daze, the duo’s descriptive lyrics often employ the language of booze and smokes. In one song, Hubbard sings of “sparks firin’ in her eyes like lighters.” In another, he tells a woman he needs “a little more you in my cup.”