
Cowboy singing and rodeo are built on certain kinds of mutually reinforcing bullshit, both are a simulacra of labour: a copy of a copy of f...
Cowboy singing and rodeo are built on certain kinds of mutually reinforcing bullshit, both are a simulacra of labour: a copy of a copy of f...
The latest volume of Whitehorse's Northern South, a collection of blues, soul and other music from the American South, must have been fun t...
The Pistol Annies — Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley — who have previously recorded two of the smartest and most sophist...
Eric Church's masculinity has never quite been threatening, but it has never really allowed for women or queer folks either, and the rock fo...
Carrie Underwood is one of country music's great criers. Her commitment to specific, overwhelming melodrama is a skill that seems slightly o...
Sometimes bluegrass, and its more contemporary cousins, can become a technical exercise in form, paying less attention to feeling and more t...
Queer aesthetics claim space through the sidelong glance, and the slightly too long stare. Often they rework a canon in order to make space....
Parker Millsap is usually a good writer and a great musician. His writing, between jangly rockabilly style guitar and earnest ballads, betwe...
Every time I think about so-called American Primitive guitarists, I think about cryptic critic Greil Marcus, who coined the term "old weird...
Ashley McBryde released a single ("A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega") almost a year ago, and a second single ("American Scandal") in January,...
One could argue all day where Brent Kissel's We Were That Song falls on the country-pop spectrum, but the point is almost moot, anyway: this...
I always think that Christmas music has to be more utilitarian than other records. There's so much of it, and so much of it is terrible, tha...
When I first heard "Every Little Thing," the debut single from Carly Pearce's debut album of the same name, I thought it was gorgeous, and w...
One of the best things I have ever seen, aesthetically, was the part in the last Shania Twain tour during which she rode a circle around Mon...
Woody Guthrie died in late 1967. Soon after, two tribute concerts were planned: one in 1968 in New York, and one in 1970 in Los Angeles. ...
In the last few years, the largest influence on new country has been R&B — especially R&B from the mid to late '90s. It can be heard in Sam...
Happy Endings, the new Old Dominion record, begins with tight harmonies and handclaps. The lyrics to opener "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart...
Tom Russell was as integral to the revival of cowboy singing and its emergence from the folk revivals of the 1960s as Ian Tyson. Russell...
In 1928, Jimmie Rodgers recorded a song called "T for Texas." It was talking blues, but its use of yodelling, how it ran through the banjo,...
On first listen, I was frustrated that Will Oldham took over Merle Haggard's tunes without attempting his trademark voice. But if we think o...