Chris Housman and Carly Pearce are this week’s AOTY contenders.
Alabama Shakes
I Must Be Dreaming
Thrilling to have them back, though there’s noticeable rust here in terms of sounding like this band at their peak. “The personal is political” is a critical cliché, yes, but it’s very much the theme of their catalog, and Howard’s at her righteous best here.
Kam Franklin
Land of the Neon Sun
Add Franklin to the long list of WOC who understand Americana as a construct first and a genre label as a far distant second. The most country-adjacent numbers here fly highest, but she’s not one to entertain such restrictions, and she makes this full-length debut count.
David Nail
Flowers
Collaborating with Anderson East brings him back in a more country-adjacent direction after quite some time in a moody adult-pop lane. That era was undercut by a weird streak of mean-spiritedness in his writing, and that’s gone now, too. A solid effort at recentering on this one.
Lauren Alaina
Stages
The production imitates the worst of Music Row’s current trends (dated 808s, snap tracks, Chase Matthew), while a whole lot of the songwriting adopts a truly antediluvian POV. The grotesque single that waxes nostalgic about literally hitting children is on here and it’s merely a dogwhistle compared to some of the other lyrics.
To her credit, she’s still prone to a clever wordplay, and she’s finally put in the work to improve her poor breath control and phrasing. Beyond that, this plays as a desperate effort to cling to Nashville’s B-list.
Billy Strings
So Much For Goodbyes
As a musician and an entertainer, he’s a generational talent whose skills continue to deepen. As a songwriter, he’s still finding his way. The highlights here include some career-best writing, but there are quite a few tracks on this record that should’ve been cut.
Chris Housman
Dodge City
Thoughtfully-written and expertly-performed pop-country bangers from start to finish, this builds upon the charm attack of 2024’s BLUENECK with a greater sense of purpose and with some ace fiddle playing from Housman, to boot. The throughline is about finding or creating intentional spaces to live authentically– and not in the gatekeeping sense promoted by authenticity fetishists, who are notably silent or dismissive when it comes to artists who speak similar truths to Housman’s– or getting the hell out of Dodge (city).
Housman ties that message to songs that are, to a one, a marvel of construction and craft and of genre know-how. He’s as capable of layering hooks upon hooks upon hooks as he is of dropping a stunning “Tennessee Waltz,” and he’s another artist who shows today’s country music at its inclusive best.
The Wilder Blue
Cinco
Enlisting outside help for production, songwriting for the first time in no way diminishes how strong their identity is: This is just a degree or two more slick and accessible than their earlier work, but their five-part vocal harmonies, ace musicianship still shine.
Zach John King
I’m What You Get
It’s the drawing-a-horse meme of Morgan Wallen albums.
Carly Pearce
Honest Woman
The rare-for-her-generation ‘albums artist’ both for her ability to bring the POVs of Yearwood, Loveless, and Tillis to bear as a woman who lives without apology and for the absolute necessity of studio assistance to mask the very real technical limitations of her singing.
To her credit, Pearce doesn’t pander to current trends to try to regain a spot on radio playlists. Instead, she doubles down on her narrative voice in ways that highlight the forthright perspective that led Music Row to turn on her so quickly in favor of Wilson, Moroney, and Langley.
She doesn’t play coy when it comes to singing about sex, she challenges how modern country incorporates evangelical doctrine, and she sings openly about how the phone stops ringing when the industry sidelines you because you won’t stop airing the “one big family’s” dirty laundry.
Hers is the version of “honest” that gets women branded as “difficult,” and she knows that and owns it with a real sense of power and agency over the course of this album. Praise be to the ProTools that can get her on pitch in the studio, because it’s her voice as a writer that’s most important.
Little Big Town
Dying Art
A lifetime ago, their egalitarian showcasing of their vocal talents, musicality, and sense of fun elevated the country mainstream. Those virtues have been leaching out of their work for years now, leaving behind a deadly dull self-seriousness.
The best that can be said for this album is that the production sounds better than their late-2010s run of albums that were slathered in too much reverb, and there are a handful of songs that would have been fine album tracks on an album with any real range in dynamics, tone, or tempo.
Moreover, If I’m Phil and ‘Berly, I’m asking myself why I’m still clocking into work at all. Their excellent voices are audible on exactly one track apiece on what is largely a solo record for Karen Fairchild. She’s a tremendous vocalist, yes, but the shared vocal duties, harmony made LBT sing.
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