There’s something refreshing about a new country artist who doesn’t sound like he spent the last year figuring out what country music is supposed to sound like right now. On his seven-song debut EP, The Georgia Kid, Ethan Garner isn’t chasing the latest trend or trying to sound like everyone else. He’s introducing himself through the people, places, and stories that made him, and for a debut, that confidence goes a long way.
“Low Country High” gets things started and immediately puts you in Garner’s world. It’s easygoing, Southern, and familiar without trying too hard to convince you just how country he is. That carries into “Classic Southern Man,” a song that, based on the title alone, could have fallen into just about every Southern-country cliché imaginable. Instead, Garner makes it feel like an extension of who he actually is rather than a character he’s trying to play.
Then you get to “Heart of Georgia,” and this is where we really started paying attention. Garner can seriously sing, and there’s a richness to his voice that feels older than he is. The track gives him room to show that off, with an almost old-school crooner quality hiding underneath the country grit. We’re not ready to start calling him the Frank Sinatra of country music just yet, but listen to this one and you’ll at least understand where we’re coming from. It’s easily one of the best moments on the EP.
“Put That Wine Away,” “Red Wine Stains,” and “Messed Up Over You” help move Garner beyond the Georgia-boy introduction and give us a better idea of what else he can do. In fact, The Georgia Kid gets more interesting when Garner ventures outside the obvious hometown material. Georgia is clearly a huge part of his identity, and it should be, but his voice and songwriting are interesting enough that he doesn’t always need to lean on where he comes from to give a song personality.
If there’s one thing we want after hearing The Georgia Kid, it’s for Garner to get a little weirder next time around, because “Bayou Band” proves he can pull it off. Written when Garner was just 18, the swampy track leans into Southern folklore, mystery and some good old-fashioned storytelling. It’s strange, theatrical and different from everything around it, which makes it one of the project’s most memorable moments. If this is what happens when Garner steps a little further outside the lines, we’d like to hear him do it more often.
That’s not to say The Georgia Kid has everything figured out, because it doesn’t need to. There are only seven songs here, and there are moments where you’re left wanting Garner to dig a little deeper or take the unexpected route more often. But this is also his debut EP. We’d almost be more concerned if an artist this early in his career already sounded like he had every answer.
What Garner does seem to know is who he is, and that matters. You hear Georgia throughout these songs, but you also hear an artist starting to figure out which parts of that upbringing are uniquely his to tell. When he digs into those details and lets that huge voice do some of the heavy lifting, he becomes really hard to ignore.
Seven songs later, The Georgia Kid leaves us interested in where Garner takes all of this next. Country music has plenty of artists trying to find a lane, but Ethan Garner sounds like he’s more interested in paving his own. For a debut EP, that makes for one hell of a first impression.
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