The two volumes of Cuttin’ Grass succeed at the difficult task of making retrospective work feel both new and essential. The concept of the “greatest hits” set moved toward obsolescence in the file-sharing era and has been made all but extinct in the streaming era. Leave…
Cam remains a talent worth following, but The Otherside doesn’t make it clear where she’s going. Since releasing her well-regarded debut, Untamed, in 2015, Cam has released new music in fits and starts: Single “Diane” earned raves all the way back in 2017, “Road to Happiness”…
The leanest and meanest country record of 2020, Tami Neilson’s CHICKABOOM! is the dynamic singer-songwriter’s fourth straight career-best album. Over a breakneck set of country and rockabilly tunes, Neilson explores what it means to be a working mother in a world that still struggles…
Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters has already endured a predictable backlash to its initial rapturous reception — a backlash led by a loud and peculiar subculture of internet trolls, all of them men, of course, who seem convinced that an album’s merit is…
Our monthly music feature, Rooted & Restless, finds country music aficionados Josh Hurst and Jonathan Keefe wading into all things Americana, expanding the definition of ‘country’ to incorporate all the permutations that the genre has opened itself up to, especially in recent years. We…
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…
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…
Dwight Yoakam is, in many respects, a victim of his own early success. His 1986 album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. remains as accomplished a debut as any in country music history, and it has cast a lengthy shadow over the remainder of his career. In…
