Bluesky Bullet Points: October 6, 2024

Album of the Year contenders from Kasey Chambers and Jett Holden lead a very strong week of new releases.

Billy Strings

Highway Prayers

Falling into Charley Crockett territory in that I’m wondering if his tremendous skill set does not include creating a singularly canon-ready album. He’s consistently good-to-great in the studio, and that’s the case here; these songs will soar on stage.

Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin

Symbiont

Blount’s capacity for using Afro-futurism laced with folk conventions as the basis for prescient sci-fi narratives is simply a wonder, and he’s fully matched by Obomsawin here. Nary a country flourish as on his earlier work, but still a brilliant record.

Jett Holden

The Phoenix

I can’t think of the last time I heard so many fifty-cent words used on a country album; Holden’s use of language is simply a wonder to behold. As is the complexity of his POV. As is his powerful singing. This record outshines every would-be rock act in country today.

Nate Smith

California Gold

His baffling rapid ascent continues on a second album in six months, sharing two songs with and in no way better than the first one. There are a few moments that grate less, wherein he drops the gravelly, adenoidal bellowing and sings all right. This aesthetic is exhausting.

Luke Bryan

Mind of a Country Boy

Because “Mind of a Country Man-Child Who Is Twenty Years Too Old For Fully Half of What’s on This Album and Who Does Not Realize That Plenty of Rural Folks Actually Lead Rich, Examined Interior Lives That He Cannot Comprehend” would obscure the unflattering cover photo.

Kasey Chambers

Backbone

Extraordinary and daresay the best of a career with multiple classic, essential records. The rare album that is deepened by an autobiographical read (“Arlo,” “Divorce Song”) for how Chambers finds the shared humanity in her own unique experiences. A triumph of empathy.