Joshua Ray Walker leads the pack with his best album to date.
Joshua Ray Walker
Stuff
Tremendous. He executes the central conceit– pondering one’s own mortality in terms of the objects we leave behind– with such confidence, wit, and vitality. And the range of country styles he embraces here highlight the breadth of his talents. A career-best by a modern titan.
Megan Moroney
Am I Okay? Tour (Live)
An exercise in wholly unearned confidence. She can’t sing these songs in the studio, and her wooden stage banter and, yes, badly off-key-on-every-single-one-of-these-tracks performances are beyond hope. No one should settle for someone so actively bad at this.
And I’m just done with this.
To say nothing of the artists who aren’t actively upholding every problematic element of Music Row politics, hell, there is a surfeit of young blonde white women who can write and sing her off the table. I’m judging anyone who tries to say this music sounds good. No.
Charlie Collins
Nightwriter
Whenever she wrote these songs, she continues to develop into a captivating and idiosyncratic writer. The sound here is the least straightforwardly “country” of any of her albums to date, but this set makes it clear she’s finding a lane all of her own. Good stuff.
Ricky Chilton
Horsepower
As with the debut he dropped in January, I’m tapping the “Irony is Corrosive” sign, but damned if he can’t construct a catchy AF tune. As a character study, the album works best as an example of “country” as a type of drag, with a good ratio of jokes that land.
Clover County
Finer Things
Self-identified “bootgaze,” and I cannot in any way improve on that description of the exact POV and vibe of her work on this debut. Some of the writing scans as a bit too workshopped, but that will surely improve with time, and what a foundation to build on here.
Dasha
Anna [EP]
“One hit wonder” doesn’t have to be a pejorative, but her one hit wasn’t really significant outside of the fact that it happened at all, and she simply hasn’t demonstrated the talent or presence to make more of an impact. Its emptiness is the only thing notable about this EP.
Jeff Tweedy
Twilight Override
As a middle-aged white dude who was big into alt-country in his teens and twenties, I know I’m supposed to be the exact demo for this. And there are some terrific songs here (“Enough” is an earworm). But my God, this project did not need to sprawl over 3 albums.
Mae Estes
Mae Estes [EP]
A dynamite singer– her tone gives early Womack– who’s been kicking around for ages, Estes shines brightest when she lets her thoughtful phrasing carry a song. And the songs here are all fine enough, though there are too few for an overall throughline. Full album when?
The fact that every mediocre white man with a sleazestache and a flat-brimmed ballcap can get a full album to market while a woman like Estes gets a couple of EPs over the course of nearly a decade– and it’s far worse for POC, obvs– is such a damning reflection of where Music Row still stands.
Payton Smith
The Bridge
Another Wallen acolyte, rather than another Pledge Week also-ran. Of note, when he stops affecting Wallen’s off-putting combo of nasal + rasp vocal style, Smith has a pretty great singing voice. Beyond that, the songs and style are all indistinguishable, mid radio fodder.
Bones Owens
Best Western
The country-blues aesthetic here makes for a good time, even if it’s perhaps a bit too spit-shined to give the truly underclass vibe Owens seems to be going for. The songs that go hardest for Western in the “spaghetti” sense fare the best on this solid effort.
Blaine Bailey
Indian Country
His best yet, this finds Bailey accepting that his terrific singing voice isn’t one that’s meant for grit or bluster; the 90s country style here doesn’t push him in a more ill-fitting direction. As ever, he’s at his best when he leans hard into Indigenous heritage.
Priscilla Block
Things You Didn’t See
A sight better than the just-dreadful EP she dropped last year, but this still lacks a clear identity in any way that matters. She clears the low bar of singing better than many of her peers, but the writing and aesthetic are barely distinguishable from standard Music Row fare.
Cole Chaney
In the Shadow of the Mountain
This rising Kentucky artist continues to impress. Recalls SteelDrivers for how he puts blunt force to otherwise traditional Appalachian sounds; this isn’t revolutionary so much as resurrecting an overlooked alt-country vein. When the songs finally match the style, look out.
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