Whether through his work with the New Orleans-based music collective The Deslondes, or his numerous collaborations with other performers, or his first solo album a few years back, some probably recognize the name Riley Downing.
Tony Hannah’s Love It Or Leave It is one of those albums you don’t really need to make a convincing argument for. You simply press play, and the music does the rest. It’s so hard to find fault in, and so easy to fall in love with.
Though the rest of the world knows him as the frontman for the new wave rock and roll band The Killers, he might have just accidentally hauled off and made an Album of the Year contender in country.
Zach Top’s career feels like it’s at a crossroads. Smartly, Zach Top has released two new songs in hopes of re-igniting some of that initial momentum behind him. And generally speaking, they feel like they could be valuable in that pursuit.
Kimmi Bitter is country music’s throwback honky tonk sweetheart with a voice like Patsy Cline, and a style like The Ventures. She doubles down on the mod/Countrypolitan/surf/’60s sound that’s so succulent to the ear.
Imparting enthusiasm and fresh perspectives into a very old genre of music—and in a manner that imparts that invigoration into the audience themselves—Bronwyn puts her signature stamp on bluegrass with new album “Rattlin’ Bones.”
There’s no need to close your eyes and suspend disbelief, or stoke the imagination with intoxicants or potions to be transported to the West Texas universe where the songs of Red Shahan dwell among the sandpaper winds.
It’s most certainly a bold work of recorded music. It’s the kind of album that’s like catnip for critics and awards organizations. But it’s also a monogenre blob of influences trying to be all things to all people, while taking a formulaic approach.
Instead of trying to re-create the past and try to meet the lofty expectations, Mike Harmeier and the boys simply focus in on being the best version of themselves they can be with the lineup of the band as it’s presently constructed.
Delightfully unpretentious, and insulated from all the trend chasing back east, they’re just writing, recording, and releasing country songs and records that emulate their heroes, and come with immediate appeal.
Rockabilly music as a genre is well over 70 years old. And yet it survives, coming back in style every few decades as artists from new generations discover it and recognize its coolness and cultural cache.
Wyatt Flores is one of the most thoughtful, honest, expressive, and gripping songwriters of this new generation of Texas and Red Dirt performers. But let’s just be open and clear-eyed about exactly what “Scared of Heights” is.
Ultimately, “Little Miss Twain” will not be what Shania Twain is remembered for. But what you can take away is that getting more personal and pulling from your own life’s story while trying to be more true to yourself always results in better art.
“Christian Name” is a recount of the last couple of years of Godwin’s life, just like many albums are. It just happens to be that the last few years have seen a renewed dedication to faith by Godwin, and for good reasons.
This record and the songs on it are so good, you’re a little mad about it. You’re not mad that theses songs are finally seeing the light of day. You’re ecstatic about that. You’re angry that it took so long. But there’s no looking this gift horse in the mouth.
Where else can you go and see modern Outlaw legend Cody Jinks, surging neotraditionalist star Zach Top, one of the greatest musical entertainers of our era, Chris Stapleton, all on successive days, with the beautiful Whitefish Mountains?
To a good consensus of old school country fans, Gary Stewart is far and away the most underrated, and under-heralded country artist of all time, with his catalog wielding incomparable influence on artists of his era, and contemporary ones.
Nathan Evans Fox is originally from rural Glen Alpine, North Carolina and a 4th generation farm. His new album Heirloom very much embraces and symbolizes the confluence of contradictions in the American South.
Not that many were questioning it previously, but on Saturday night, July 18th at the Under The Big Sky Festival in Whitefish, Montana, Zach Top had a resounding answer to anyone who wondered if he deserves headliner status.
West Virginia’s John R. Miller gratifies a whole host of musical erogenous zones on his new album The Great Unknowing, including honky tonk country, Appalachian folk, feral folk rock, and a few other things.
The mixing of country with dark inspirations either from its past, or from influences from the world of punk and metal and beyond have resulted in some of the most creative, inventive, and spellbinding moments in the history of the country canon.
Mr. Keith has crafted a classic country record, and a darn good one too, filled with great country instrumentation, clever and true-to-country lyricism, and good old-fashioned heartbreak. It reminds you why you’re a country fan.
It’s the way that River wields an uncanny ability to craft incredibly infectious melodies, and then brings them to bear on music otherwise colored with dark themes. It’s the way the music mixes country and rock…
Amid the race to the bottom that right-leaning mainstream country performers such as Lee Brice and Brantley Gilbert are currently devolving into, the extremely left-leaning politically-focused Bryan Andrews just bested them all.