For someone just in her early 30s, Kelsey Waldon sure seems to have mortality on her mind. “Only here for a moment, then we’re gone,” she shrugs in “White Noise/White Lines,” a plainspoken proverb of impermanence. Just a few minutes later she offers a…
Sooner or later, Luke Combs was bound to release an album called What You See Is What You Get — the old adage makes for a perfect mantra to encapsulate his cheerfully unfussy style. All 17 songs, which run just under an hour in…
Many were surprised when Old Crow Medicine Show were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, which has, of late, skewed heavily in favor of current commercial hit-makers, regardless of their ties to the genre’s history. And though they’ve only flirted with mainstream success—thanks almost…
Contrary to what the country airplay charts may tell you, the last decade has been a creatively fertile season for the women of Nashville: think of Kacey Musgraves’s small-town cynicism, Miranda Lambert’s kerosene-soaked rabble rousing, even the feisty, confessional songwriting of teenage Taylor Swift.…
Allison Moorer’s last album, Down to Believing, which drilled into the messy cycle of grief, was arguably a career-best for the extraordinary singer-songwriter. Her latest, Blood, plumbs even greater depths and boasts even more scalpel-sharp songwriting; in what has been an exceptional year for…
The most incisive and distinctive songwriter of her generation, Miranda Lambert has a track record to date—counting her three outings with Pistol Annies, a total of ten albums that range from great to canon-worthy—that leaves her with few true peers. It’s less productive to…
Midland have drawn the ire of authenticity fetishists who take issue with the trio’s having invented a hardscrabble origin story when, in reality, the group members’ respective paths to country stardom included such activities as directing a music video for Bruno Mars and working…
“I believe, for the most part, I done good,” sings Tanya Tucker toward the end of While I’m Livin’, her first album of original material in more than a decade. It’s a straightforward self-appraisal that caps off an album of knowing retrospection; this isn’t…
The Highwomen were convened to address a particular problem: Gender disparity on country radio (thus far in 2019, only one woman has had a #1 single). Amanda Shires had the idea of putting together a posse of righteous singers and songwriters with the intention…
In 2001, Rodney Crowell released an album called The Houston Kid, a loose collection of autobiographic sketches reflecting on his upbringing in the Space City. His latest is called Texas, the very title suggesting that he’s panned the camera outward and made something closer…
