The tale of a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, the title track to Toby Keith‘s latest album finds the country star utilizing his sharpest storytelling skills. Working with co-writer Rivers Rutherford (Brooks & Dunn), “Bullets in the Gun” is an expertly crafted portrait of a drifter who falls for a raven-haired temptress “in a little border town.” Soon Keith’s narrator is conspiring to rob the girl’s boss at gunpoint and escape with his lover to Mexico. The haunting production, which builds to several crescendos after a sparse beginning, nicely accompanies the track by mirroring the characters’ pursuit and ultimate payoff. While the lovers’ demise in a hail of bullets at the end of “Bullets in the Gun” is not a surprise, the plot’s predictability doesn’t make Keith’s images any less enchanting.
