New releases from Tift Merritt, Levi Turner, River Shook, McCoy Moore, Norman North, SOBI, Outlaws’ Almanac, Billy Ray Cyrus, The War & Treaty, Colby Acuff, Jason Eady, Koe Wetzel, and Kashus Culpepper.
Tift Merritt
Sugar
Her best album since Tambourine a lifetime ago, and it is not particularly close. She shakes off the Americyawna trappings with a ramshackle, loose-limbed set that allows her to cut loose with her most soulful, evocative singing and sharpest writing in literal decades.
Levi Turner
Road Recordings
Young’un remains firmly in “promising” territory rather than “great right now,” but it’s refreshing to hear an upstart of his generation drawing clear inspiration from D. Scott, C. Knight, and REK. A bit of studio polish would help, but when it all does click, look out.
River Shook
River Shook
The great irony, of course, is that it’s the genre’s loudest authenticity fetishists who’ll piss and moan about Shook having crafted this solo debut as an expression of living as their authentic self, consequences be damned.
Shook knows this, of course, and leans in.
The irony of their craft and what they’ve accomplished here is that the album is often formally conservative in ways that create a tension with narratives of living a truth that, in 2026, makes far too many people uncomfortable.
Twangier than their work as a bandleader, this retains their singular singing and narrative voices while getting even more personal in their songwriting. In that way, this functions as both a welcome return and a reintroduction to Shook as one of the most vital and important artists in the country space today. An essential listen.
McCoy Moore
Sunshine State
Split equally between tracks that imagine if Kenny Chesney could sing in tune and tracks that imagine if Cole Swindell could sing more than three notes. Fine in ways that are hard to care about one way or the other, but is not an actively hateful Music Row dude, so.
Norman North
cedars house
Still prone to issues of quality control, but he’s taken a pretty substantial leap forward on this album. The best tracks really lean into his knack for country songwriting traditions, set to rhythm tracks that add shape to his narratives. He brings some twang, too.
SOBI
life will be easy again
An artist in the contemporary folk space who can really and truly sing and who isn’t afraid of the occasional genre signifier? Hallelujah. She leans hardest into melody-forward pop, but there are flourishes of dobro and honky-tonk piano, too, and she’s a clever lyricist.
Various Artists
Outlaws’ Almanac
A powerful collection spearheaded by Lizzie No, who always understands the assignment. In this case, she has assembled a cadre of similarly clued-in peers– and No’s peer group includes only the savviest of contemporary artists– to assess The State Of Things.
So many of the most vital and disruptive voices in the greater country universe are here: No, Kaia Kater, Nathan Evans Fox, Olivia Ellen Lloyd… This roster represents who we want at our own crowded table.
The songs they tackle all take a broad approach to protest music, emphasizing connection, communication, and empathy. As a playlist, the album stands as a testament to contemporary humanism, filtered through traditional folk forms.
That works and is important because No and Co. understand that living without apology as a person from the marginalized communities they represent is perhaps the most outlaw thing a person can do in 2026. These are artists whose communities are quite literally in danger, often as a matter of law. This is an album about leaving “outlaw” posturing to Music Row’s white men with their invented grievances and claiming one’s own space.
Billy Ray Cyrus
The Hill
The only thing going for him here is that his voice has actually held up quite well. Because he spends the entirety of this making it hard to argue that he’s due for some kind of reappraisal or that he deserves to be taken more seriously. The taste couldn’t be more questionable.
The War and Treaty
The Story of Michael & Tanya
Start-to-finish, this is the closest they’ve come to an album on which the songs and production are fully up to the task of matching their singing. This record reaffirms that theirs is a story, like their best-in-class vox, that deserves to be heard far and wide.
Colby Acuff
Handmade Horsepower
Oh, so he’s mad mad. He remains a tremendous talent, and he deserved far better than he got from his time in Nashville. But the appeal of this exact stripped-down set hinges on anyone’s susceptibility to CAPSLOCK anti-establishment, “outlaw” posturing sentiments.
Jason Eady
Tulsa Turnaround
Impressive that, as he has continued a long arc from “singer-songwriter” to “bandleader,” he’s never wavered in terms of quality-control or focus as a writer. Which is to say that the emphasis here is on smokin’ arrangements, but the songs still hit as prime Eady.
Koe Wetzel
The Night Champion
Regression toward the Music Row mean after a more promising effort last time out, he’s drawing less from quality grunge-era influences than from post-grunge and buttrock aesthetics. He’s still better at this than Jelly Roll and Warren Zeiders, but these returns diminish.
Kashus Culpepper
Act I [EP]
He sounds more settled, aesthetically, on this set of 80s-era R&B-forward country– think Babs Mandrell moreso than “Crisco”– than on his solid enough debut album earlier this year. It’s a good pivot. And, as ever, his vocals elevate even the lackluster material.
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