Markus Sommer True Sounds of the West

Published Feb 13, 2019

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...

Whitehorse The Northern South Vol. 2

Published Jan 15, 2019

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...

Pistol Annies Interstate Gospel

Published Nov 01, 2018

The Pistol Annies — Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley — who have previously recorded two of the smartest and most sophist...

Eric Church Desperate Man

Published Oct 03, 2018

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 Cry Pretty

Published Sep 14, 2018

Carrie Underwood is one of country music's great criers. Her commitment to specific, overwhelming melodrama is a skill that seems slightly o...

Punch Brothers All Ashore

Published Jul 17, 2018

Sometimes bluegrass, and its more contemporary cousins, can become a technical exercise in form, paying less attention to feeling and more t...

Queer Songbook Orchestra Anthems and Icons

Published Jun 18, 2018

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 Other Arrangements

Published May 02, 2018

Parker Millsap is usually a good writer and a great musician. His writing, between jangly rockabilly style guitar and earnest ballads, betwe...

Various The Thousand Incarnations of the Rose: American Primitive Guitar and Banjo (1963-1974)

Published Apr 18, 2018

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 Girl Going Nowhere

Published Mar 27, 2018

Ashley McBryde released a single ("A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega") almost a year ago, and a second single ("American Scandal") in January,...

Brett Kissel We Were That Song

Published Dec 06, 2017

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...

Various Bloodshot Records' 13 Days of Xmas

Published Nov 14, 2017

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...

Carly Pearce Every Little Thing

Published Oct 11, 2017

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...

Shania Twain Now

Published Oct 02, 2017

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...

Various Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts

Published Sep 20, 2017

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.  ...

Kip Moore Slowheart

Published Aug 30, 2017

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...

Old Dominion Happy Endings

Published Aug 23, 2017

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 Play One More - The Songs of Ian and Sylvia

Published May 19, 2017

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...

Chris Stapleton From a Room: Volume 1

Published May 12, 2017

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,...

Bonnie "Prince" Billy Best Troubador

Published May 03, 2017

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...