Fifteen new releases are reviewed and rated!
The Red Clay Strays
Live at the Ryman
Another live Ryman album with inconsistent recording and engineering issues. Their whole deal still strikes me as “Jackson Maine on a good day”– not a complaint, per se– but this set captures their appeal and ascendancy better than their studio records. Good on ’em for that.
Dolly Parton & Family
Smoky Mountain DNA: Family, Faith and Fables
Another example of music as a forum for academic study, this is country and folk as a work of thoughtful ethnography. As an album, it’s never less than fascinating, even if the recordings are often less than great on their own merits. Wish Dolly’d done this years ago.
George Jones
The Lost Nashville Sessions
It’s 2024, and we’re getting newly-unearthed recordings of one of popular music’s all-time greats in his prime, delivering one-or-two-take scratch takes of some of his best material for in-studio radio sessions. Hard to believe this exists, frankly, and what a real gift.
Dwight Yoakam
Better Days
He’s never released a bad album, but this is handily his strongest since Blame the Vain back in ’05. The two pre-release singles are the weakest tracks here by far, as he leans into questions of how to figure out if he’s still got it as he gets older. Which he obviously does.
Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens
American Railroad
Essential and timely reminder of how folk and country music traditions can preserve culture at risk of erasure, while also rewarding academic research and scrutiny. As ever, Giddens does not miss. The arrangements here simply astonish.
Dylan Schneider
PUZZLED
The snap tracks, the ballcap, the hip-hop appropriations and affectations, the brand loyalty as lifestyle signifiers, the marginal half-singing, the women who exist only as a reaction to a stunted man-child… Every element of post-Bro Country is present here.
Sonny Gullage
Go Be Free
Even in the best year for blues in recent memory, Gullage is a standout for the conviction in his singing. He works up a hell of a bluster without sacrificing the quality of his vocal tone, and, at just 25, he’s already mastered varied phrase lengths like a veteran.
Darrell Scott
The New Modern Hymns
Skip the opener, and the remainder is perhaps the best record in this exact vein since Fred Eaglesmith’s Tinderbox or Todd Snider’s Agnostic Hymns. One of our finest songwriters subverts religious norms without condescending to their origins: Hallelujah, jubilee!
Owen Riegling
Bruce County: From the Beginning
Canadian proves Music Row doesn’t have a monopoly on creating this kind of boilerplate, anonymous contemporary country. He has slightly more varied production than Nate Smith, Bailey Zimmerman, and Tucker Wetmore, so he has that, plus a couple of decent hooks, in his favor.
Tyler Joe Miller
Going Home
Canadian proves that Music Row doesn’t have a monopoly on creating this kind of boilerplate, anonymous contemporary country. He sings a bit better than Nate Smith, Bailey Zimmerman, and Tucker Wetmore, so he has that, plus a couple of slightly above-average tunes, in his favor.
Flatland Cavalry
Flatland Forever
At 25 songs and 90 minutes, the title’s a warning; there is a best-of-the-year album to be edited from this set, especially with the Kaitlin Butts collabs. But, as is, this is overlong and uneven, though they remain one of the genre’s best current bands.
Callista Clark
Reckless
Steep growth curve for this upstart, whose songwriting talent is undergoing rapid intensification. She’s learning how to leverage phrasing in her performances, too. Some of the more Avril-lite production moments distract, detract, but a strong pop-country effort here.
Fancy Hagood
American Spirit
Production’s too slick for some of the thematic work, and some of the wordplays (“Savior Self,” “Good Grief”) are too on-the-nose. But Hagood’s got an ear for a strong melody and a clear-eyed songwriting perspective. The collaboration with Michelle Branch could be a AAA hit, too.
Jamey Johnson
Midnight Gasoline
A whole lot to love if you’re someone who believes country music should only ever sound exactly like this. For the rest of us, there’s still Johnson’s unimpeachable songwriting to latch onto, even if it’s all a bit overlong and monotone at album length.
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