Kevin Bronson on September 19th, 2019

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Cody and the Blackouts came together in 2016 as the latest outlet for the songwriter Cody Hudock, who over the past decade has performed and/or released music under his own name and as Cody the Band, as well as played in brother Jordan’s Marvelous Toy.

Hudock formed the Blackouts with multi-instrumentalist Brent Stranathan and guitarist Jordan Bennett (who has since moved away from L.A. and departed the band), and the lineup now features guitarist Jimmy Holman, bassist Will Weissman and Hudock’s wife, singer Joanna.

Their debut album “Gold” is less precious metal than it is emotional grit. Like the 2016 album Hudock made with Bennett, “The Great American Album,” it cuts a wide swath across American music, recalling the college radio bands of the 1980s, any number of rock-Americana greats and piano-wielding popsmiths who can seize the moment with a single couplet. Owing to Hudock’s often-cutting, always-earnest lyrics, the Blackouts come off as the band most likely to have put down their history textbooks long enough raise hell at the local bar.

“Most of these songs touch on the realities of watching time pass, and reassessing what really matters to you,” Hudock says. “I try to stay in a space where I can be honest about the fragile state in which I’m held together, and the struggle of just going through the motions in a world that you don’t quite seem to fit.”

“Gold,” then, introduces itself with fitting gravitas via the song “Weight of the World.” The single “Sister Sister” is an L.A. song if there ever was one; “Matter of Time” is an old-fashioned stomp with X-like harmonies from the Hudocks; and the anthemic “What Is Left” advises sweeping aside life’s detritus to focus on what is “built to last.”

Timelessness seems an overriding theme for Hudock, who says, “There’s tremendous value for me in creating something that I felt was truly great and leaving behind a record of my existence. Material success is always great, but my true joy is in the process and creation.”

Of course, there are always seeds of doubt. In the especially poignant “Somehow I’ll Make Good,” Hudock sings: “I’m scared that the best I’ll ever be / Will never be good enough for me.”

“Gold,” produced by Ethan Kaufmann (Avril Lavigne, Wild Party) and Stranathan and mixed by veteran Capitol Records engineer Chandler Harrod, is out Friday.

||| Stream: “Gold” in its entirety

||| Live: Cody and the Blackouts celebrate their album release with a show at the Mint on Friday. Tickets.