Josiah Flores leads the pack with his sophomore effort.
Hudson Westbrook
Texas Forever
The reigning king of Pledge Week Country continues to be a star in ascent. He’s the most talented of this ilk in terms of songcraft– if still too much of a Zach Bryan acolyte for my tastes– and singing ability. This set shows that he still needs to learn to edit.
Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band
New Threats From the Soul
Here’s 2025’s MJ Lenderman album: A widely hailed alt-country set that I can appreciate on some level for its craft and can understand the appeal but is just… not for me. College Radio DJ me would’ve been all over this record. Now? It’s fine.
Charles Kelley
Songs For a New Moon
An album of in-no-way-country late 80s pop tracks that is most noteworthy for how much better– and how much lower of an aural Melatonin dose– it is than his work with Lady [Redacted]. The mealy-mouthed enunciation remains an affectation he’s actually good enough to drop.
Josiah Flores
Doin’ Fine
A tremendous and long-overdue sophomore record from an artist who centers his Chicano POV in a brand of trad-country that shows rare gifts for melody, song structure, and economy of language. Like many genre greats, he tempers his heartache with wit, catchy tunes.
Zandi Holup
Wildflower
Her singing voice is weird in a way that I dig– think a soprano Miley Cyrus– but which will not be to all tastes. Her songwriting on this debut set is nearly as distinctive and idiosyncratic as her singing, too. If not everything coheres yet, she’s one to watch.
Laura Jane Grace
Adventure Club
Do I miss the cow-punk style of last year’s Give An Inch album? Very much so. Only “Free Cigarettes” carries that throughline to this set. But is this a killer modern punk album? Absolutely, and politically forward in a way I’m here for in 2025.
Cory Hanson
I Love People
As solid as his solo efforts always are, this set has an easy to like Laurel Canyon / cosmic country vibe to it that makes a good home for his vocal timbre. The tone of the writing occasionally skews a bit too arch, but not in a way that ruins the whole project.
Julia DiGrazia
All In
This is fine enough, but there’s not really anything distinctive about her singing or her writing to make an especially strong case for her. There are a few seeds of good ideas for songs (“Two Truths and a Liar”), but they just aren’t executed well. Room to grow, maybe.
Larry Fleet
Somewhere in the South [EP]
Manages to express its fundamental conservatism without being a belligerent ass about it, which feels like a minor miracle for a Music Row product in 2025. He remains a more competent writer than singer, but his baseline for both is higher than many of his peers.
Brent Cobb & The Fixin’s
Ain’t Rocked in a While
Not his usual aesthetic, as indicated by the title, but this hits well in a “Both of The Black Keys turned out to be total shitheels, so this fits the bill” kind of way. Which is to say it’s derivative but executed quite well, and with some of Cobb’s best writing.
Chris Janson
Wild Horses
The radio hits have dried up, so bring on the MAGA grift (“The left ain’t right / And the right ain’t wrong”), and in such an utterly hacky way that it all sounds like it’s written and performed by AI. Even beyond the politics, it’s all bottom of the barrel stuff.
Wow! Whoever wrote that Chris Janson song must’ve thought they so clever.:)
I wonder what you think of the Ashley Monroe album? I’ve been disappointed by her music in the last few years, including her new album. It’s as interesting to me As a 2000s Mary Chapin Carpenter album.