Aubrie Sellers leads a solid set of new releases.
Leah Blevins
All Dressed Up
She explores a wide range of early 70s country styles throughout this brief 10-song cycle. This would work even better if there were a more consistent throughline from track to track in terms of style, but she’s as effective on a trad-country weeper as she is on a cosmic country rocker.
Best of all is “Centerfold,” a slice of swamp funk that imagines what Jerry Reed’s music might sound like in 2026. She’s a singer of real clarity and presence, and her writing showcases a far richer POV than did her 2021 debut.
And, for as vocal a detractor of his work as I’ve been, this is Dan Auerbach’s best– and least Dan Auerbach sounding– production work since Dee White’s debut record… or perhaps even The Black Keys’ El Camino.
Which is to say I didn’t realize it was him until I checked the credits post hoc.
Lil’ Ed and the Blues Imperials
Slideways
The sheer enthusiasm and some idiosyncratic writing and song selections (“Homeless Blues,” “Make a Pocket for Your Grief”) elevate their solid but perhaps a bit too conservative approach to contemporary blues. A good time, though, as such things go.
Handsome Jack
Barnburners!
Curious about the Venn Diagram for “serious audiophile” types who’d appreciate the engineering on this album x the audience for the “a couple of steps up from Blueshammer, but that’s the gist of it” of the album’s actual music. “Polk Salad Annie” is the highlight.
Jim Lauderdale
Country Super Hits, Volume 2
Would that we lived in the part of the multiverse where that title were our shared reality, and that Lauderdale was truly the genre hero he deserves to be. Hell, I’d settle for living in an era when lip-service to 90s country meant artists were still covering him.
Instead, Lauderdale remains country’s forever Cool Uncle, and unc’s cool enough to adopt that role with self-awareness and humor.
This collection of songs are, to a one, a testament to his commands of song structure and economic language, and he’s somehow singing better than he ever has. Heroic.
Luke Combs
The Way I Am
It’s been a generation since a country star of this actual magnitude– Kane Brown’s the closest analog, and he’s not (yet…) sold out multiple nights at Wembley Stadium in the UK– has attempted a pivot toward introspection this sincere and this consistently executed.
In an era when genuine thoughtfulness and empathy are values held in outright contempt by the country genre and powerful cultural arbiters, it matters that Combs continues to push in this direction.
Sure, the writing on Kip Moore’s latest was sharper overall, but Moore’s not of the same stature.
So for Combs to balance some actual radio-ready bangers– ones that don’t punch down at or show contempt for people he views as beneath him– with songs about gratitude and hard-won wisdom, it makes for an album that, if not an all-timer on its own merit, nonetheless is important in this moment.
And, for more context of how he and we got here, Marissa’s absolutely tremendous profile of Combs in this week’s GQ (!) is the required reading.
Aubrie Sellers
Attachment Theory
The read on her remains the same: She sounds just like her mama, if her mama was fronting an early-aughts garage band. And that read remains essential and a near perfect alignment to my own tastes. It’s baffling that so few others have tried this exact style.
But perhaps that’s because others lack Sellers’ particular and peculiar skill set.
This is the most interesting and most consistent set of songs she’s yet recorded. She goes deeper than mere “pop psychology” here and digs into her own and her partners’ interior spaces (“Little Rooms”). Essential.
Iron & Wine
Hen’s Teeth
On one hand, there are no real surprises here; on the other, I’ve been very much surprised by how much I’ve been drawn to the specificity of his songwriting and clarity of his singing on this album after having found him godawful dull for more than a decade running.
The duet with I’m With Her, who feel like they’re on a well-earned victory lap these days, and the fact that a guy in this country-inflected contemporary folk space is actually singing in tune both carry an awful lot of weight.
The “folk horror” album art is a nice bonus, too, fwiw.
Jail Preacher
Caught in Your Memory: Sermons From the Delta
An odd one, in that the individual tracks are, for the most part, pretty strong, but few of them sound like the work of the same band. The best foreground ace vocal harmonies and traditional instruments in an early Turnpike style, which is something, for sure.
Cordovas
Back to Life
I will yuck this yum: This all sounds like very stale Bread, just with the occasional banjo or pedal steel mixed in and underbaked.
Ashley Kutcher
Back to My Roots & These Roots Run Deep
TikTok upstart shows some promising enough early-Ballerini country-pop songcraft and clever lyrics, but the enunciation, breath control, and untamed vibrato all demand a vocal coach if she’s to make good on that promise. Because hoo boy, these vocals are rough.
Which is to say, it’s not the worst singing you’ll hear on a country record in 2026, which should be a widely-known commodity at this point.
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