Chris Stapleton, “Higher.”

Chris Stapleton is one of the most accomplished musicians in country music today. The Kentucky native has garnered eight Grammy awards and 14 Country Music Awards. Plus, he’s penned hits for everybody from Kenny Chesney to Taylor Swift. Stapleton’s latest album, Higher, his fifth, travels between Monday Night Football rock and roll, sparse and delicate acoustic introspections, slinky rhythm and blues, and heartfelt twang.

His first album since 2020’s Starting Over also tackles meaty issues like love, loss, addiction and recovery. The album’s opener, “What Am I Gonna Do?” paints a picture of rural American desperation. In a way it’s similar to Oliver Anthony’s right-wing summer anthem “Rich Men North of Richmond,” but here the problems are more personal than political.

“Been drinkin’ everything on that shelf/ Feels like I’m killin’ myself/ You’re gone and it hurts like hell/ Wishin’ I was anybody else,” Stapleton sings.

Addiction is also featured on heavier bluesy number “South Dakota,” which posits the rural state as a liminal place between addiction and recovery.

“Lord this morning when I woke up I wanted that whiskey in my coffee cup/ Had last night ringing in my head/ Telling me I oughta go back to bed,” Stapleton sings. “I keep on staying behind/ I’m in South Dakota/ Trouble ain’t hard to find.”

On the straightforward and Petty-esque rocker “The Bottom,” Chris Stapleton again focuses on the personal stakes of addiction, singing, “The bottle holds the whiskey/ The whiskey holds the man.”

Toward the middle of the album, the music shifts to smoother rhythm and blues in what could be considered a “make out” interlude similar to side one of Led Zeppelin IV. “The Fire” evokes The Police hit “Bring on the Night” and Manchester Orchestra’s “The Sunshine” with its elegant acoustic guitar. “Think I’m In Love” combines the smooth styles of bluesman Robert Cray with the sophisticated weirdness of Gnarls Barkley. “Loving You On My Mind” opts for soul over twang until the song’s bridge reestablishes its white, rural bonafides.

The album swerves away from connubial bliss and back toward the honkin’ and tonkin’ that made Stapleton a truck stop name. “White Horse” builds to the rugged machismo of a Budweiser commercial with just a hint of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” intensity after a musically understated intro. Delicate slide guitar provides pathos on the title track and the lonesome “The Day I Die.”

The closer, “Mountains of My Mind,” pairs Simon-and-Garfunkel-style acoustic guitar with Stapleton’s plaintive vocals as he once again sings about journeys, not simply from one location to another, but between hope and despair, optimism and experience.

“There’s a destination/ I’ve got a ways to go/ There’s a revelation/ That I might never know/ Somewhere salvation is waiting down the road,” he delivers

Higher manages to capture the zeitgeist of 21st century America, without ever using a fancy word like “zeitgeist.” Stapleton’s latest is an album, which, like America, is searching desperately for a missing piece of itself. It longs to feel complete and to be understood — and for it all to make sense. But the pain and yearning in Stapleton’s voice make it clear that we’re not there yet.