Overall, the album has very few highlights and few low points, making it a monotonous listen from start to finish. If you liked one song, you’d likely enjoy them all. The songs tend to fall into one type of sound, filled with twangy guitars, harmonicas and slow country croons. Bryan takes a few risks across the album, opting for a more ramped-up production style and riff-based tracks, such as “Appetite” and “Santa Fe.” Although the stylistic switches are a nice break from the otherwise relatively flat-sounding tracks, the songs in which he sticks to his typical “just me and my guitar” sound tend to yield the best results lyrically. The most apparent examples of this come on tracks like “Plastic Cigarette,” “Aeroplane” and “Skin.”
The lyrics across the record induce a feeling of nostalgia, especially on the opening track, “Down, Down, Stream,” which is a poem with no instrumentation behind it. Bryan often does this in his music, sprinkling in spoken poems to his country melodies, including popular tracks like “Fear and Friday’s (Poem),” “This Road I Know” and “Lucky Enough.” 

Country music is known for its patriotic nature, lamenting about the beauty of the flag and the American dream, often ignorant of the country’s deep-rooted systemic problems. Bryan’s song “Bad News” challenges this stereotype, being called the “ICE song” because of its political reflection and lyrics such as, “Every day on the news someone else is shot” and “ICE is gonna come bust down your door,” commenting on “the fading of the red, white, and blue.” Tonally, the song falls into the same sound as the rest of the album, with a repetitive chorus and slow guitar backing track. While this song’s lyrics don’t display much of the poetic side that Bryan demonstrates in some of his other tracks, it does have several powerful and reflective lines. Bryan reflected on this song being a call for unity, not a diss track of America, telling Instagram that he loves the country, and that’s what makes what is happening even more hurtful. 

“With Heaven On Top” offers fans plenty of new music, but not enough high quality tracks to justify its length. With few standouts, the tone is repetitive but not altogether bad, giving fans more of the sound they like. While moments of lyrical honesty shine through, this record ultimately proves that a longer tracklist doesn’t always make for a stronger album.