A 50th anniversary release from Tina Turner is among the best releases of the week.
Treaty Oak Revival
West Texas Degenerate
Compared to a Hank III or DBT, there is a real and just kind-of sad artlessness to the ways these songs wallow in underclass clichés w/o any sense of reflection, insight, or empathy. It scans as posturing. The badly AutoTuned vox are somehow even more off-putting.
It’s not really a surprise that they’re having a moment as a band– the actual musicianship is fine enough for what it is– but the shallowness of this material, which too often aims for shock value that just isn’t in any way shocking, doesn’t warrant their bluster.
Jamie O’Neal
Flowers & Fireflies [EP]
One of many victims of country’s post-Chicks purge of women, O’Neal has long deserved better than she got. The songs on this EP aren’t on the level of her biggest hits, but she still sounds fantastic here, moving capably across pop- and trad-country styles.
Haunted Like Human
American Mythology
This duo’s best album yet is a studied, hyperliterate collection of poetry set to unfussy and lovely country-folk song structures. Their gifts for melody shine, as do their exquisite vocal harmonies. This could so easily skew pretentious but never does.
Ty Herndon
Thirty: Vol. 1
Re-records tracks from his solid career as duets with a (mostly) quite game cast of collaborators. He’s in fine voice throughout and sounds particularly attuned to Rimes, McBryde, and Fairchild & Cotten. Nothing essential here, but it’s always good to hear him again.
Melissa Carper
A Very Carper Christmas
It really and truly is. What a testament to her confidence in her artistry that she can carry her inimitable personality and voice through a collection of mostly original tunes that are funny and poignant and so very Carper. She’s a treasure.
Brad Paisley
Snow Globe Town
A couple of originals with his signature wit and guitar-work (“That Crazy Elf (On the Shelf)” is the highlight here), but this is mostly giving I Owed The Label One More Album To Run Out My Contract and feels phoned-in as his star continues to wane.
Old Crow Medicine Show
OCMS XMAS
A spirited effort, for sure, even if not all of the originals here hit their marks the whole way through. Still, it mostly works as a change of pace within the usually stuffy genre of Christmas music, and it gives off the vibe of a jam session.
Trisha Yearwood
Christmastime
Exquisite. One of the all-time greatest vocalists fronts a full orchestra on a cleverly curated mix of originals (“Years,” a holiday update of “The House That Built Me,” is the highlight) and less-common covers, set to effective lite-jazz-leaning arrangements.
Tyler Rich
Poppy & Iris
Fifteen years ago, this would’ve gotten Hot AC airplay alongside DAUGHTRY, whose vocal timbre and aggressive competence Rich shares. Combining two earlier 2025 releases, this shows an inability to self-edit, though this is all of uniformly “fine enough” quality.
Tina Turner
Good Hearted Woman
Restored from the Tina Turns the Country On recording sessions, and daresay this makes for an even more cohesive and singular statement than her proper solo debut. Her rock, funk, and soul influences figure prominently in the arrangements, performances…
… But this is country music through and through, and how different might the modern genre– or all of popular music– have been had this absolute titan of an artist continued in this vein? Her performances here strut and smolder as each song demands, highlighting her command of the form.
And I’ve long been on record that Candi Staton’s “Stand By Your Man” is superior to Tammy’s, and now I’ll say that Tina’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man” somehow manages to be superior to Loretta’s. That’s not a knock on Loretta, either, but a testament to what Turner does on this record.
Vincent Mason
There I Go
The latest Pledge Week Country guy sounds like the John Mayer of Parker McCollums. The asthmatic vocals strike me as an affectation to mask what would probably be too pretty a natural vocal tone for the current market. Production here is better than many of his peers.
Apparently he has a song (“Hell is a Dance Floor,” which does not interpolate Pink’s “God is a DJ,” so why bother) with more than 100M streams on Spotify, but the single from this that’s been out since February has just scratched 6M.
The consumption patterns with Pledges defies conventional wisdom.
Leon Majcen
Makin’ a Livin’ (Not a Killin’)
Impresses for how his ability to be funny on purpose never once undercuts the poignancy or heft of his modern underclass narratives. The surface read is as a shitkicker, but there’s a real sensitivity and razor-sharp intellect underneath. His best yet.
Snocaps
Snocaps
Opens as a glorious, note-perfect homage to 90s Modern Rock radio and ends as what sounds like a great new Waxahatchee record. Meaning that I have zero interest in debating the semantics of how “country” it is and will simply claim it outright. Tremendous work by all parties.
Willie Nelson
Workin’ Man – Willie Sings Merle
Of his stellar current run of albums, this is perhaps the first that I wish he’d recorded back in his prime vocal era. His aged voice doesn’t add to these Hag covers the way it does to much of his recent output. Still, a lovely tribute from one titan to another.
Anne Wilson
Stars
More convincing on this faith-forward set than on her debut as a would-be Music Row “Rebel” last year, she still lacks a POV that makes any of her songs distinctive– every narrative and emotional beat here is telegraphed– and still needs to rein in that untamed vibrato.
Luke Bell
The King is Back
It’s all too much, really, in every sense. The 28 tracks here would have been served slightly better had they been bifurcated into a couple of standalone records, though the reasons for not doing that certainly make sense on a human level.
More important, though, is the weight of the grief that hangs over this album, for what a monumental and potentially game-changing talent has been lost. It makes one of the year’s finest trad-country albums a difficult and heavy listen. Bell understood genre formalism as a means to a greater end.
And if you haven’t read Marissa Moss’ tremendous profile of Bell– and his mom– from a few weeks back, it’s truly s-tier music writing.
Leave a Reply