Chasen Wayne is way ahead of the pack this week.
Sheryl Crow
Pick You Up
… That’s it? She’s been coasting for quite a while, but this scant set, billed as a full album and not an EP, trades her usual wit and firepower for the most greige production and banal lyricism of modern Americana. Which, yes, includes the dreadful Jesse Welles collab.
Gavin Adcock
The Day I Hang it Up
Having positioned himself as Music Row’s latest Heel, he’s now trying to speedrun Wallen’s career arc. So here’s his attempt at an “I’m the Problem”: 1000 years long, feigned reflection, no actual capacity for growth or impetus to change a damn thing, and lacking the prefrontal cortex development and base musical skill to have pulled off such a thing anyway. He embraces Amazon Wish List lifestyle signifier songwriting and flat-out cannot sing.
He should send Graham Barham a sixer, since Barham is pretty well the only act setting a lower bar in 2026.
Lauren Watkins
If I’m Being Honest
The title lands ironic on her 3rd album in 3 years. Her promising debut captured a clear-eyed POV, which her follow-up jettisoned for overtly Tradwife-coded aspirations. Now, every track alternates between aping the lyrical styles, songwriting tropes, and even vocal timbres of Kacey Musgraves (okay, taste) and Megan Moroney (My God, no). It leaves the impression after three albums that Watkins doesn’t know who she wants to be as an artist beyond one who will chase a trend to be famous. So she trades way down on Musgraves and about even on Moroney. Pass.
Chase Wayne & The Honky Tonk Machine
Diamond Saloon
Tremendous. Aesthetically, they make it perhaps too easy to dismiss what they’re up to as mere bait for genre purists, but there is a very real sense of disruption and real skill in how they throw in some unexpected and effective improvisational flourishes.
Similarly, the three-act structure to this concept album on first pass might appear to rely too much on “& Western” iconography. But there’s a depth to the scale of this narrative arc, which takes unexpected turns and gets dark and bloody in ways that challenge genre convention.
Wayne has cited no less than Cormac McCarthy as a primary inspiration for this project, and damned if he and his band didn’t pull off this album in a way that earns the comparison. What sounds at first like an awfully good honky-tonk record emerges as a No Country (Music) For Old Men kind of effort.
Laci Kaye Booth
Love Ain’t For the Faint of Heart
This record showcases the fearlessness of Booth’s songwriting and her unconventional POV. The production doesn’t match that energy on a consistent basis, though: Many of these tracks owe an obvious sonic debt to Swift’s folklore/evermore, which is a mismatched vibe.
Just Jayne
A Lil More Jayne
“A Little Bit Alexis” as a pop-country album, with no one in on the joke. Just dreadful.
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