James Bruner has spent two years creating his most ambitious collection of songs to date. Now, with Can’t Keep Wanting You finally out in the world, the Nashville rocker is ready to take it to the stage — and back to the UK.

For James Bruner, the release of Can’t Keep Wanting You is still something he is trying to get his head around.

After two years of writing and recording, the album is finally out there — a 12-track collection which grew from an initial songwriting session into a much bigger creative journey.

“We wound up with a vault of 26 songs,” Bruner explains. “It’s very odd to be here, two years later, and those songs be out in the world.”

The process began shortly after the release of his 2024 single Eye In The Sky, when Bruner went into a songwriting session with producer and friend Shane Wiseman.

They had no grand plan to make an album.

“We didn’t think that we were making an album,” he says. “We just knew that I wanted to try out some stuff.”

But the songs kept coming, and eventually that experimental session developed into the record that has now been released.

Bruner describes it as a “fresh slate” — a new era built from the many influences that have shaped him.

“I feel like I never try to do the same thing twice, even with my EPs, my singles, whatever,” he says.

“This kind of era is a fresh slate for sure. It’s kind of a hodgepodge of all the things that I like in music.”

That makes for an album which moves confidently between styles without losing its rock identity.

“I think there’s a song for everyone on this album,” Bruner says. “If you like punk rock, hard rock, more screaming rock like Jet, there’s a lot of Lenny Kravitz sprinkled throughout it.”

The diversity is particularly striking when individual tracks are considered.

The title track, Can’t Keep Wanting You, explores the attraction of something you know may not be good for you — the temptation to keep chasing something despite knowing the consequences.

Bruner describes it as “chasing toxicity”, but says its meaning extends beyond relationships.

“For me, it was like my chase towards my vices, and my relationship with my art and music,” he explains.

He admits that even as an artist who has already established his own identity, there are moments when he questions whether he is doing the right thing.

“Are we doing the right thing?” he asks. “Am I doing the right thing, being on stage jumping around with no shirt and makeup on?”

The answer, ultimately, is yes — but that uncertainty has become part of the creative process.

“Maybe I can’t keep wanting this. And then I’m like, no, I can,” he says. “It’s kind of a common thread through the album of wanting what you can’t have sometimes and maybe sometimes being very unsure of what you want.”

That sense of honesty runs throughout the record, particularly on the album opener Show Me The Way.

Bruner has described the song as a search for balance and peace, and says songwriting has increasingly become a way of making sense of life.

“In life, I’m just kind of like the rest of us, figuring it out as I go,” he says. “If I don’t know what I’m doing in life, I put pen to paper — search inward rather than outward.”

That makes songwriting something much more than simply a creative exercise.

“Songwriting’s always been a therapeutic thing for me,” he says. “Channelling the anger that I’ve got or the heartbreak or the sorrow or the drive or the happiness into something that I didn’t have before has always been just magic to me.”

If Show Me The Way represents the reflective side of Bruner, Hypnotised provides the full-throttle counterpoint.

It is a song born from self-doubt but transformed into defiance, with Bruner revealing that the basic framework was created in just half an hour.

“I was just like, let’s try a song about just saying, ‘Fuck off’ to all the doubt,” he recalls.

Inspired in part by the raw defiance of Jet, the song became a statement of control and self-belief.

“I wanted to be like, it’s my show, I control my destiny,” he says.

It has subsequently become a favourite way to bring his live performances to a close.

“I love closing down the shows with it,” he says. “Just let out every scream in my body.”

Another standout is Shine, perhaps the album’s biggest vocal surprise.

Built around a beautiful piano arrangement, the track sees Bruner singing in falsetto — a technique he had never previously used as the principal vocal throughout an entire song.

The idea came almost by accident.

“We were at first going and waiting for the day, and I was singing full voice,” he explains. “Then I remember I hummed it.”

Producer Shane Wiseman immediately stopped him.

“He just went, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can you sing it like that?’ And I said, ‘Yup.’ And he went, ‘More interesting already.’”

Bruner admits that he initially wondered how people would react.

“I’ve never sang a full song just in a falsetto voice like that,” he says.

But the experiment opened up a new understanding of his own voice.

“There was so much on this record that surprised me about specifically my voice,” he says. “I didn’t know the extent that I could channel it to, like, the grime, the grit, the scream — and also flip it over and do falsetto vocals as the lead lines.”

That willingness to experiment is central to Can’t Keep Wanting You.

It is an album which reflects the artists Bruner has absorbed throughout his life, but without simply attempting to replicate them.

And while the record itself is now complete, Bruner has already been testing its songs in front of audiences.

“It’s always very fun to take those songs — songs that aren’t even recorded or maybe demoed out — and play them in front of an audience,” he says.

“It’s kind of like a free trial session.”

The title track was among the new material he performed when we met in Manchester, and Bruner says there is something particularly exciting about hearing an audience react to music before it has officially been released.

“It’s always super amazing to go out there and play songs that aren’t out in the real world yet and to get praised for them,” he says.

That relationship with the UK is something Bruner clearly values.

He has already toured here, including a run with Orianthi, and says he has developed a genuine affection for the country.

“I’ve just grown to love the UK and treat it like a second home at this point, even though I’m here living in Nashville,” he says.

With further UK dates being put together for November, there is plenty more opportunity to experience the new material in its natural environment — on stage.

And Bruner is promising that the live version will continue to evolve.

“I just want to try to one-up myself each time I step on that stage.”

That ambition is reflected in the way he talks about the future.

Rather than viewing Can’t Keep Wanting You as an end point, he sees it as another stage in an ongoing journey. There are already new songs being performed which have not even been recorded.

“I’m moving along,” he says. “I would say slow but surely, but I don’t even know if that’s the right answer. It feels like I’m moving pretty fast right now.”

Ultimately, though, the motivation is not simply about career progression.

It comes back to the experience that music gave Bruner himself when he was discovering the artists who would become his idols.

“When I heard their music, and when I went to small shows and heard music that maybe wasn’t inspiring to the mass appeal, but it hit me in the chest and took me back a few steps, I felt seen,” he says.

“I felt so seen by my idols. I felt so seen and so welcome.”

That is what he wants to give back.

“So if I can give a fraction of that back to the people that come to my shows and see that, well then I’m gonna chase that forever.”

For an artist who has just released an album born from experimentation, self-doubt, risk-taking and an ever-expanding understanding of his own voice, it feels like a fitting philosophy.

Can’t Keep Wanting You may be out in the world, but James Bruner clearly isn't finished yet.

“I’ve got a lot of fight left in me,” he says. “I’m ready to just keep going.”

For more information, head over to www.jameshbruner.com and in the meantime, check out the title track Can't Keep Wanting You below.