A Country Way of Life

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Tucker Beathard – King

Tucker’s dad Casey is a writers room legend who has written lots of songs by Eric Church as well as No Shoes No Shirt No Problem, which gives its name to Kenny Chesney’s fanbase, No Shoes Nation. Tucker’s grandpa was the GM of the NFL and his brother CJ is a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.

Notable in the context of this album is Clayton Beathard, who was stabbed outside a Nashville bar four days before Christmas 2019. Tucker, who is only 25, has the potential to make art from this tragedy and has done so. As I mentioned the other week, the album ends with a father and son writing about the song I Ain’t Without You, one of many lighters-aloft anthems on an album that is in the lineage of Eric Church and other rocking country acts.

Indeed, One Upper, written with Eric Church’s guy Jeff Hyde, and You On, written with dad and Eric Church’s other guy Luke Dick, are evidence of this. The former is set in a bar, where Tucker meets a guy who lives a better life aside from Tucker’s baby who is ‘right on the money, top of the top’. It made me smile and want to book Tucker as a support act for The Chief.

You On, meanwhile, sees him want to ‘turn all this missing you to a smile on your face’. It ought to be called turn you on but I am sure this would offend somebody. I love the guitar line and you might too. The album begins with some pop-punky guitars and a rock drum pattern on Better Than Me whose chorus explodes into life.

It is followed by the rock ballad You Would Think, written with the great Canadian country act Donovan Woods and dad Casey. It’s a country song because the chorus goes ‘you would think you would think of me’ after all the things Tucker thinks of in the verses. A fun drinking game would be to drink on every think but please don’t: you will go to hospital.

The ballad Faithful and the almost college rock of Only are both written with another child of country royalty. Marla Cannon-Goodman is the daughter of Willy Nelson and Kenny Chesney’s producer Buddy Cannon.

Paper Town is another song driven by a massive riff that reminds me a little of Everybody Wants To Rule The World. The chorus is colossal and sounds like a song Bradley Cooper would sing in A Star Is Born, near the start. Find Me Here, Broke Down opens with Tucker full of regret, hungover in a hotel bed. He could have decorated this song with enormous guitars but, in a smart production move he goes all Dave Matthews and keeps it acoustic and ‘broke down’. I love the detail about using the Bible as a coaster. This sounds like a song Bradley Cooper would sing in A Star Is Born, near the end.

Other fine tracks include 20/10 TN, a series of phone calls to a lady who seems to have abandoned him, and kiss-off song Miss You Now. They respectively sound like Old Dominion and Jason Aldean, so fans of those acts will enjoy King. Too Drunk (‘too drunk to drive me crazy!’) is almost a Nirvana pastiche. Nirvana, let it be known, disbanded before Tucker was born.

Above all this is a record Tucker wanted to make; a record, not a group of songs flung together. He’s not a major label puppet (in fact that major label album is not on Spotify). I think there’s enough here to stand up to repeated listening and I hope Tucker gets to play live, either solo or with a band. 4/5

Jonathan Terrell – Westward

Jonathan Terrell, known as JT, is going Westward for a rocking country album that opens with the one-two punch of Never Makes A Sound and Good Again. He’s ditched the quiet acoustics of his older material and, possibly inspired by Ruston Kelly’s work, has turned up the amps. There’s a great chat with the Austin Chronicle where JT reveals he had scrapped an entire album, has a chest tattoo of the words Heartache Tycoon, lost his brother to suicide and decided to enter the ‘young man’s game’ of rock music.

The album contains Mark from the band Midland, as well as a string quartet and organ from Gregg Rolie, best known as the singer of Santana and Journey. Many of the songs are suitably cinematic: Star Child has an added spoken word section and JT sighing ‘Tell me what you want’; Something I Do opens with a few bars of harmonica; and on Raining In Dallas he JT moans in despair towards the end of the song.

Even the title of the song Lemon Cigarettes and Pink Champagne, a David Ramirez co-write which is happily backed up by a tune where the word ‘coattails’ leaps out, evokes a movie. I found I could happily listen to more than 10 tracks, many of which are tight and taut and are almost too short, such as uptempo kiss-off The Last Time where, in true Texan style, he calls himself an ‘old fool’, and These Days, which pulverises the listener with its opening riff and JT’s growling vocal delivery. Album closer Cowboy Band is a wonderful waltz which Bob Harris would play on his show.

If like Bob and I you love bands who rock in a rootsy way, like Dawes, The Band or Reckless Kelly, this is a great album for you which hits the sweet spot between melancholy and forward thrust. 4/5

Ruston Kelly – Shape & Destroy

Ruston Kelly inspired a GRAMMY Album of the Year. Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour was all about how happy she was in love. For reasons known to them, the pair announced a separation in early July, meaning this is no divorce album. Indeed, Ruston sent Kacey a birthday message (fun fact: the pair were born exactly one year apart).

I first heard him thanks to his breakthrough LP Dying Star, which contains Mockingbird, one of the great songs of recent years. Shape & Destroy, which runs at a crisp 41 minutes, was previewed by five songs in the modern manner. Rubber adds some digital drums to a song that includes the words ‘suitcase’, ‘cathedral’, ‘mansion’ and namechecks Agatha Christie and Voltaire. It’s a soft singalong with strong melodic heft and includes the line ‘Can I bounce back or just lay flat?’ Brave is another soft, acoustic number where Ruston meditates on how he will be remembered. Radio Cloud opens with the line ‘call me a misfit’ and has a bulletproof chorus that shows he can write pop songs if he wants to.

We’ve also heard Pressure (‘I hate to be dramatic but I think these days I might crack’). He is a vulnerable songwriter who doubts happiness when he sees it. The stadium-sized Under The Sun, meanwhile, looks at ‘brighter days still to come’ that takes the themes of Kacey’s song Rainbow.

Album opener In The Blue opens with some urgent acoustic guitar and a lyric about having ‘rainbows in my mouth’. Alive sees Ruston ‘looking through a telescope, not a cloud in the sky’ because he is in love. What an interesting decision to leave a love song on the album. Mid-Morning Lament, with its pedal steel, is a sublime meditation.

Closest Thing is a gorgeous two-minute wedding song that compares love to flying and falling. Clean and Jubilee are toe-tappers, the latter driven by an ascending melody in the verse that mimics Ruston climbing a mountain. The album ends with the vignette Hallelujah Anyway, where a choir of Rustons, as on Brave, look towards the end of his life. This is an excellent album with top production values and a mix of happy and sad, to quote a Kacey Musgraves songtitle. 4/5

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Josh Turner – Country State of Mind

In 2019 Josh Turner headlined The Long Road then lost a valuable member of his crew in a road accident weeks later. He was promoting a spiritual record called I Serve A Savior, and Josh is a man of God whose piety is explicit rather than implied. He is also a fan of country music and knows his history, as evidenced by the tracks which have been released in the months leading up to the full project which is finally out now.

The big headline is his version of Forever And Ever Amen featuring Randy Travis adding the final amen. Josh is definitely in the ‘new trad’ tradition and displays it over the course of 12 tracks on Country State of Mind.

Aside from Randy, Josh ropes in the following stars: John Anderson on the rockin’ I’ve Got It Made; an octogenarian Kris Kristofferson on Why Me, where Josh hits some very low notes indeed; Allison Moorer on Hank Williams’ plea to the Lord, Alone and Forsaken; Runaway June on You Don’t Seem To Miss Me, written by the great Jim Lauderdale; Maddie & Tae on Desperately, where the harmonies are terrific; and Chris Janson on Country State of Mind, which was written and performed by Hank Williams Jr, the new Country Music Hall of Fame inductee.

I still love I Can Tell By The Way You Dance and I’m No Stranger To The Rain, from stars of the 1980s Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley respectively. Like Randy Travis, Alan Jackson has now passed into the realm of classic country. His story song about ‘a drunk man in a cowboy hat’ (who could it be??) Midnight in Montgomery is placed in between Forever and Ever and the theme to Dukes of Hazzard, originally a huge hit for its writer Waylon Jennings in 1980.

The album ends with the Johnny Cash song The Caretaker. It’s as if he is channelling John’s spirit, changing the name to Josh in a song about what happens after he dies. This is a tremendous collection of covers which introduced me to at least three fine songs which I had never heard before. Long live country in the pre-Garth era! There’s gold in them vinyl records. 5/5

The Mavericks – En Español

The Mavericks are today on Mono, their own label, and tour the world with their Texmex grooves which mix country, Mariachi and the blues. Last year they put out their covers album, mixing songs by Waylon, Bruce and Elvis; before that was a Christmas album full of original compositions.

I caught them touring Brand New Day in 2017 at the Indigo2 which was packed with rich melodies sung by the wonderful Raul Malo. In 2020 their next trick is an album of Spanish-language songs written by the band. A useful tool was a dictionary from the 1940s!

The first brass note comes in just after the two-minute mark of the opening song La Sitiera, whose final minute is an excellent introduction to what the band are trying to do. No Vale la Pena and Cuando Me Enamoro add some accordion. This album has more horns than a Mark Ronson project, with some real echo in the studio, and Raul demonstrating that his should be considered one of the great voices of the last 50 years.

He told NPR that he used to speak in Spanish to his Cuban grandma. There is a cover of Me Olvide de Vivir (I Forgot to Live) originally by Julio Iglesias, which was Raul’s grandpa’s favourite song. It reminds me of On The Road Again or Gentle On My Mind and is a good starting point if you want to dip into the album.

My Spanish is atrocious but you get the general gist of what Raul is singing about from the titles alone: Recuerdos (Memories), the chirpy Poder Vivir (To Live), minor-key ballad Sombras Nada Mas (No More Than Shadows), infectious shuffle of Mujer (Lady), the sultry Sabor a Mi (Give Me a Taste) and Suspiro Azul (the mysterious Blue Sigh).

Cuande Me Enamoro translates as Timeless Love, which is a universal language. It is a beautiful, beautiful piece of music. Listen if you don’t believe me – it’s track 11 of En Espanol – and the best bit is when Raul sings in English over the fade!! Tantalisingly the final track fades too, as if the band are riding off into the sunset.

Just as In The Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda was a thankyou to his own grandparents, so En Español is the Mavericks attempting to do the same. If you liked the movie Coco or the Buena Vista Social Club guys, please take time to enjoy another fine record from an American treasure. Arriva! No need to travel with En Español. Cinco out of Cinco aka 5/5

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

IV Jason Isbell  and the 400 Unit – Reunions

Jason Isbell is the much-loved singer-songwriter-guitarist from Alabama who is Mr Amanda Shires. Fun fact: his first name is Michael, like how Paul McCartney is really a James. I won’t tell you what a brilliant album this is, with immaculate production, song structure and melodic shape, or compare Jason to Neil Young, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Dylan (yep he’s another new Dylan) and Bruce Springsteen (he’s also another new Bruce); others have already done so.

I’m just going to quote some of Jason’s poetry so you can go discover Reunions for yourselves and see how he frames the lyrics with the 400 Unit, who are one of the best bands in America.

‘This used to be a ghost town but even the ghosts got out’ on Overseas, which mourns a lost love. On River, with Amanda’s fiddle prominent: ‘The river is my saviour cos she used to be a cloud…even when she dries up 100 years from now I’ll lay myself beside her and call my name out loud’.

On Only Children he is ‘walking around at night/ fighting my appetite/ Every kid in cut-offs could be you’, while the middle eight of Be Afraid is ‘We don’t take request, we won’t shut up and sing/ Tell the truth enough you’ll find it rhymes with everything’ (which shouldn’t rhyme given what he’s saying in that couplet!).

St Peter’s Autograph takes the form of advice to a grieving friend: ‘What can I do to help you sleep?…We’re all struggling with a world on fire’

It Gets Easier (‘but it never gets easy’) will be a t-shirt slogan: ‘Last night I dreamed I’d been drinking…woke up fine and that’s how I knew it was a dream’.

An extra point to note: once again Jason has his own label and releases the record on Thirty Tigers, an independent label who, as with XL and 4AD, prove that there is space in the indie sector to make records that are miles better than focus-grouped albums that come out on Sony or Warners. 5/5, but you knew that anyway.

Margo Price – That’s How Rumors Get Started

Margo Price’s third album That’s How Rumors Get Started follows two albums released on Third Man, Jack White’s label, and also a solo album from Margo’s husband Jeremy Ivey (who will release another in the fall). The couple enjoyed the birth of her third child, Ramona Lynn, in May so she is technically on maternity leave while doing promo for the album.

Sturgill Simpson has produced it in much the same way as Dave Cobb produces those of Jason Isbell and (indeed) those of Simpson. A lush organic sound gives the listener an opportunity hear each note and beat as it lands. Margo’s country voice is soft and pure but with a bit of grit, a little like Linda Ronstadt’s or SJ from Morganway.

Letting Me Down is a wonderful bit of cool rock which has a long fade(!!), Hey Child has tinges of Muscle Shoals r’n’b while Stone Me was the album’s first single, a song about glass houses set to a saloon-style piano. Gone To Stay, meanwhile, is a lost Fleetwood Mac song.

The album is very American and very comfortable, the sort of music Lukas Nelson is making at the moment. On What Happened To Our Love she writes ‘you were the music, I was the dancer’.

At ten tracks it isn’t long enough but then again Margo recorded it while pregnant so her new baby will inspire her fourth album. Along with Brandi Carlile and Yola, she is proving that sisters can do it for themselves. 4/5

Steve Earle – Ghosts of West Virginia

Steve Earle is never less than interesting. He’s now a full-time dad to a special needs son and is working on what is sure to be the best memoir since Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. Married several (six!) times, imprisoned, strung out on drugs and now in the creative run of his life, Steve’s 20^th album is Ghosts of West Virginia, a deeply personal album which is naturally political. It packs a punch, coming and going inside 29 minutes.

The track It’s About Blood is folk music that sounds like the Earth itself. It was sung on the New York stage in the play Coal Country, to which this album is a companion piece. Six tracks on the album are here, performed with The Dukes.

Steve is a loud Democrat and this album hopes to reach across the divide to people who didn’t vote Democrat in 2016, changing the world ‘one heart and one mind at a time’.

On the album, as in the show, Steve tackles the story of John Henry – ‘my son Justin Townes had written one and I hadn’t!’ he told World Café – because the mythical steeldriver may have worked in West Virginia on the railroads, blasting tunnels through the Appalachian mountains. Time Is Never on Our Side sounds a bit like A Life That’s Good from the TV show Nashville.

Steve’s voice throughout, full of humming and deep breaths, sounds like that of Johnny Cash, who was in his early sixties when he made those records with Rick Rubin. Fastest Man Alive is a bit of rockabilly, Black Lung is bluesy and closing track The Mine is sung with despair in Steve’s vocal chords. It’s About Blood remains the centrepiece of the album.

Ray Kennedy, Steve’s production ally, gets the best out of the instrumentation. Expect GRAMMY awards for Ghosts of West Virginia, an urgent album from a songwriter who can teach you how to do it at a good price. 5/5 – please make time for it.

Justin Townes Earle died on August 23 2020 aged 38. Long life to his dad Steve and all the Earle family.

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Hot Country Knights – The K is Silent

Before Dierks Bentley plays his usual set, he comes out with his live band, all in wigs and facial hair, and sings a string of songs that pastiche 90s country music. With the recent death of Joe Diffie, and the irrelevance of Toby Keith, there is a gap for funny country music and there is nothing funnier than a major label giving Dierks Bentley a record deal for his side project.

The K is Silent comprises ten tracks over 36 minutes that try to give the listener a good time. Album opener Hot Country Knights begins by spelling out the band’s name and Dierks’ familiar voice prepares the listener for a ‘good time…everybody’s cutting loose with their jeans on tight’. There’s a passage full of key changes that goes nowhere, proving that the joke is musical as well as lyrical. It sounds like 1995 and it’s wonderful to see a major label support Dierks in bringing some joy to the country world.

If you don’t like the opener you will hate the enforced jollity of this album but it’s the perfect one that idiots will say ‘we all need right now’. Comedy is necessary all the time, not just in a pandemic.

We knew many of the songs before the album’s release: the energetic Pick Her Up with Travis Tritt, which has a false ending; the single entendre of You Make It Hard with the underrated Terri Clark, which has pedal steel, a key change and a proper middle eight; and weepie Asphalt, with the lyric ‘I woke up at the crack of dawn and left a note by her bed’ and layers of whistling for the final chorus.

Moose Knuckle Shuffle is a line-dance song that will surely do well on TikTok: ‘Put your hands in your pants and you hike ‘em up high’ is a fun lyric and the song is driven by cowbell. Expect the dance to feature in UK parties for a good while once normality resumes.

Of the new tracks, Mull It Over is a heartache song which Midland would be proud of. Check out the key change! Ditto the awesomely titled Kings of Neon, which is driven by the album’s best riff and chorus. Wrangler Danger is a cautionary tale set in Whiskey Row, which happens to be Dierks Bentley’s Nashville bar (product placement!!) and is about a ‘heartbreak kind’ of girl. There’s a joke in the middle eight about how to spell trouble; I won’t spoil the punchline in case you find it funny.

Then It Rained (‘It stopped for a little while’) is a story song about a man in a bar who hears George Strait. If it sounds a bit like The Thunder Rolls, it’s intentional; I expect Garth has waived his songwriting credits out of respect for the Knights, and I also expect it was a fun song to write. The song ends with a B major chord but it’s in B minor! Verse one recalls how the man’s wife was away and it rained; verse two is set in a honkytonk where he bought some wine and it rained; verse three has the man finding loose change in the sofa, which is stained; verse four features the man apologising to his wife for being late for dinner. The joke is that the rain is just the weather, in no way significant at all except to emphasise loneliness or disgust at the man’s situation.

Closing track The USA Begins With US is recorded live, with Dierks shouting ‘Let’s do this!’ before yelling like Kenny Chesney about playing ‘all 48 states’. It’s an anthem in the key of Toby Keith and Joe Diffie, with the ‘crowd’ cheering ‘USA! USA!’ and the chorus not allowed to come in until Dierks has finished proselytising. It actually sounds like a Jimmy Fallon skit where he impersonates Blake Shelton or someone. Over a recorder solo, we hear the great Presidential speeches, including Nixon’s ‘I am not a crook’, Clinton’s ‘I did not have sexual relations’ and George W Bush’s ‘Fool me once’. Again, this sounded like fun for Dierks and company. Like Midland’s repertoire, this is music to laugh at and then marvel at its composition. The joke is that it’s really not a joke! 4/5

The Texas Gentlemen – Floor It!!!

The Texas Gentlemen are beloved by those in the know including British-based duo O&O. The album is Floor It!!! and begins with a rich brass instrumental called Veal Cutlass that sounds like The Titanic crashing into an iceberg. Bare Maximum is another phenomenal track, full of riffs, funk and soul and the album continues in that vein.

We finally hear some lyrics on track three, Ain’t Nothin New, which has a classic West Coast feel. This is a band who have studied the greats – Elton John, The Band, Nilsson, Eagles – and I am all in for it. You can tell that the band have played with Kris Kristofferson, who probably has stories about all of those acts and more.

The track Easy Street is followed by one called Hard Road. There’s a song called Skyway Streetcar, which is as awesome as it sounds. She Won’t ends in a wigout jam that sounds like fun. Charlie’s House is almost a Steely Dan collaboration with Jackson Browne. The title track, Floor It, is eight minutes that summarises a great, great album. Please take an hour to discover your new favourite band. O&O were right. 5/5

Joshua Ray Walker – Glad You Made It

Rolling Stone Country called Joshua Ray Walker ‘a baby-faced 6XL guitar hero with a Dwight Yoakam voice’. Glad You Made It is a quick follow-up to his debut Wish You Were Here. It’s also a quick album: 10 tracks, 31 minutes.

Joshua Ray Walker is a Texan singer who throws in all the country vocal tics of the old singers like Hank Williams and Roger Miller. Opening track Voices, with a tambourine on the backbeat, adds pedal steel and a voice that you could find in a church. You’d be forgiven for missing that he’s singing about driving his truck into a lake while leaving a bottle of alcohol in his hand. True Love picks up the pace but is nonetheless sad since it’s ‘meant to fade’.

You know you’re in country music from the album’s first bar: Loving County begins with some yodelling; Play You A Song is a hoedown, with some quick picking; One Trick Pony is a honky-tonker that fans of UK troubadour Ags Connolly will love. (In fact I would love a JRW and Ags double bill.) Cupboard begins with him examining cans and turns into a meditation on time. The lyric is direct and the drums are pulsating. In Boat Show Girl he quotes the inscription on the Statue of Liberty while talking about the titular characters: ‘Take this beauty home…just like every boat show girl wishes that you would.’ Ooh.

As it stands Joshua is due in Europe in December. I’ll do my best to catch him and you should as well. 5/5 for the big-hearted guy.

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Kip Moore – Wild World

Kip Moore once scrapped an entire album and has spent his career toeing the line between critical success and returning record label investment. He’s like Eric Church with more of a screw-you attitude. A rocker in the body of a country musician, Wild World includes some Kip Moore songs: She’s Mine and Red White Blue Jean American Dream are both punchy, riff-driven and sung with that grainy voice.

Self-produced, Wild World welcomes writers like Brett James, Luke Dick and David Garcia to the party, as well as Dan Couch who wrote Somethin Bout a Truck. If you don’t know his music, his vocal on opening track Janie Blu will pull you in. There really is nobody like him, a sort of crooning rocker who never overdoes it.

Elsewhere the songs are mature and varied. Slowies and quickies, meditations and songs for relaxation, big singles and album tracks. Southpaw sounds like a smash to me, with a killer chorus and another great vocal, while Fire and Flame is produced immaculately, the better to underscore a really metaphysical song about a ‘reckless heart’. It is anthemic and deserving of huge stadiums. If only Kip played a little bit by the rules, he’d be a superstar. As it is, he is more a cult concern.

The title track is one of the meditative ones which uses the irritating ‘mama said’ motif but is nonetheless excellent; Hey Old Lover drives on, something it shares with Red White Blue Jean American Dream; Grow On You is rifftastic and reminds me of Downtown by Lady Antebellum; ‘a little bit of your love is more than enough’ is a fun love song. The final track is Payin’ Hard, an acoustic driven song played on what sounds like a 12-string. Kip sings about how his life is like a credit card where he buys now, pays later and pays hard. You feel like you’ve met Kip Moore on this album; every track is his and he has so much editorial control.

One issue I have with the album is that it’s very I-IV-V heavy – which means all songs sound quite similar – but that’s rock music’s rudimentary chord pattern so I can’t complain. Attitude gets Kip a long way here and several tracks will land on his Best Of, especially Fire and Flame and the title track. It’s not perfect but it’s relistenable and will convert a few new acolytes to the crowd. 4/5

Brett Eldredge – Sunday Drive

Brett Eldredge was obviously doing what he was told with his last album, so he went away for a year, wrote some songs with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk and during 2020 he has been dripfeeding them to his fans. I am one of them, I think he’s terrific, with a soulful voice perfect for Christmas classics. Country Buble also looks swarthy and has a dog called Edgar, who was all over his social media channels before he disappeared. Going Away For A While wasn’t just a songtitle of his, it was a necessary step in his life. He’s all about mental health and having good days, as he told Pip at Entertainment Focus in a great interview.

He spoke about capturing the magic of the songs as they were being written in his garage in Illinois. Magnolia is a good place to start, where Brett is having a ball over some rough piano – it sounds like a demo take – as he talks of meeting a girl in ‘the heart of the heartland’. It’s a lot like Beat of the Music but set in the Midwest and not Mexico.

There are ballads, as there always are on a Brett Eldredge album. The classic-sounding Crowd My Mind is gorgeous, set over the same sort of piano found on Kacey Musgraves albums, while the philosophical When I Die is going to be as big as One Mississippi, one of Brett’s best songs. I also applaud the pre-release campaign: Gabrielle was the song with the big push but four other songs, including the poppy Where The Heart Is and the brilliant Sunday Drive, first heard when Brett was on work experience many moons ago, were also pre-released to whet fans’ appetite. Mine was whetted and now satiated.

Sunday Drive is a terrific album, full of joy and excellent vocal prowess. It’s by far his best and a big step forward for an act whose songs have never quite put him into the A List. This album will. Congratulations, Brett, and see you soon. 5/5

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Will Hoge – Tiny Little Movies

Will Hoge is a veteran of East Nashville’s hip scene. He wrote Better Off Now, which was covered by Lady A, and co-wrote Even If It Breaks Your Heart, a number one for Eli Young Band (more writers of that song coming later). I was delighted that Brendan Benson, one of the top singer-songwriters operating today, covered Will’s song Baby’s Eyes on his new album.

Will put out the terrific album Anchors in 2017, following it up with the svelte but punchy My American Dream in 2018. Tiny Little Movies is beefier, with 11 songs that Rolling Stone reviewed positively. His 2015 albums Small Town Dreams was his stab at the mainstream but Will realised he was indie and not mainstream. It’s our gain: ‘You’ve really got to toe the line,’ he said in that interview. But Eric Church can operate outside yet within; perhaps Nashville is allowed to have one outlaw, for the brand, like the Stonecutter Club can have ‘no Homers but one Homer’.

If you like Jason Isbell, The Jayhawks and anything Bob Harris plays with guitars and drums, you’ll love Will Hoge. When I heard Young As We Will Ever Be on his show, I played it five times immediately afterwards. His new collection offers more of the brilliant same, delivered with a rye-soaked vocal. Every track has something to recommend it, be it a lyric, guitar tone or harmonica. The best ones on first listen are Midway Motel, as fine an opener as you will ever hear this side of a Bob Dylan album, the tender The Likes of You, ruminative Maybe This Is OK and The Curse, which is 100% Will Hoge. Listen and discover your new favourite country rocker. 5/5.

Willie Nelson – First Rose of Spring

Bob Dylan topped the US Album Chart the week that an even older man put out his latest album.

I hate that his name is shorthand for cannabis consumption as Willie is so much more than the face of 4/20. At 87, Willie Nelson is still working, even though his July 4 celebration was moved to an online-only shindig. Willie played with his sons Micah and Lukas and his family at his Ranch, while many favourites of the fest – Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Sheryl Crow, Margo Price, Asleep At the Wheel, outlaw Kinky Friedman, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Ziggy Marley – called in from their home.

First Rose of Spring is Willie’s 70^th – SEVENTIETH – solo album. Bob Dylan, a sprightly 79, is yet to hit 40 albums! Buddy Cannon has again produced Willie, who mixes covers and originals. The terrific opener and title track is co-written by Randy Houser, while the likes of Don’t Let The Old Man In by Toby Keith (a smart choice of cover, sung with a Leonard Cohen growl), Our Song by Chris Stapleton (‘I don’t know if heaven’s real but that’s how you make me feel’ is proper Stapleton), We Are the Cowboys by Billie Joe Shaver and Stealing Home by Buddy’s daughter Marla. Just Bummin Around sounds like a song young Willie would sing back in the 1940s; indeed, it was written in 1952. Willie was a teenager.

Though Willie is 87 years old, nobody stops being a songwriter. The two originals are Love Just Laughed and Blue Star. The latter song is gorgeous, spectacularly arranged by Buddy Cannon and with harmonica and pedal steel. Likewise Hier Encore, which is retitled Yesterday When I Was Young and given a Texan twist. This is organic music that needs to be heard. 5 blunts out of 5.

Clint Black – Out Of Sane

The hot new artist of 1989 was Clint Black, a rockin, cowboy-hatted guy who was Killin Time on his debut album. The album had four number ones, all written by him, and his big hit-making career coincided with that of Brooks & Dunn, Travis Tritt and Garth, Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney. Possibly because he hasn’t had a huge hit in 20 years, Clint is not mentioned in the same breath – it doesn’t help that Texas love and claim their own – but 28 Top 10 hits in the 1989 and 1990s made him a popular performer.

He featured on a Grand Ol Opry Saturday night show recently, playing alongside Darius Rucker, and I loved his song Nothing But The Taillights. He was there to plug Out of Sane – poor title – and he played a song called America (Still In Love With You), which is a bit sappy and saccharine but effective considering it really is a great nation (with tonnes of problems). I like the chords in The Only One and the positive nature of A Beautiful Day.

He’s a meditative chap as shown by tracks called Can’t Quit Thinkin and My Best Thinkin’. He’s also a detective – we’ve got Found It Anyway and Find Myself – though I think an editor would ensure words weren’t repeated across titles.

There’s a super version of Everybody’s Talkin with a great backbeat that comes in the middle of the album Out Of Sane. The album is full of twang – fans of Brad Paisley will love this! – and Clint’s baritone, which sounds better than ever. It’s a super album and I’m going back into his catalogue as the 90s revival, spearheaded by Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen, gathers pace. 4/5 for Out of Sane.

Ray Wylie Hubbard – Co-Starring

At 73, Ray Wylie Hubbard is newly signed to Big Machine, having co-written a big song for Eric Church called Desperate Man. I know him by name as an old-school singer who had hits in the pre-Garth era but I wouldn’t be able to hum anything he’s written, so I am coming at his new album Co-Starring relatively fresh.

Big Machine have copied what they did with Sheryl Crow last year – I am positive that Tim McGraw is lining up a duets album with someone other than his wife. I’d love to hear a Garth Brooks duets album too, by the way – I’d like that.

Here, on Co-Starring, Ray sings with acts including Joe Walsh, Ringo Starr, Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes, Ashley McBryde, The Cadillac Three, Pam Tillis and Ronnie Dunn. Opening track Bad Trick is smoky and cool. Ringo is on drums, which is very cool considering he just turned 80 (EIGHTY!!). On Fast Left Hand he sounds a lot like Steve Earle, growling over the top of The Cadillac Three’s bluesy guitar playing with, strangely enough, rapidity in the fingering hand.

Cult musician Aaron Lee Tasjan appears on Rock Gods and Larkin Poe are on Rattlesnake Shakin Woman. Drink Till I See Double is a lot of fun, perfect for Broadway’s honkytonks. Pam Tillis lends her gentle voice to both the plinky-plonky Mississippi John Hurt, a good title, and album closer The Messenger, where the great Ronnie Dunn also pops up. The album is rich in sound and a perfect representation of RWH’s USP. I hope he can tour even though he is in the at-risk category. 4/5 for Co-Starring.

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Cassadee Pope – Rise and Shine

She says it’s an EP but it’s an eight-track mini-album on which Cassadee has writing credits for every track. An independent artist not beholden to commercial pressures, she has chosen to present all of them with just acoustic instruments.

Rise and Shine, the title track, is indicative of the project even if it makes me smile because it references a Kylie Jenner catchphrase. Let Me Go is a tender and glorious breakup plea. Reminiscin song Hoodie is poppier and an interesting premise: Cassadee wants to return an ex’s old hoodie, in the knowledge that he will think it’s an excuse to see him. ‘It’s funny how it took me back to us’. It’s very relatable. Counting on the Weather is a fine pop song with a lot of Taylor Swift influences. Ditto Hangover, which compares a new guy to a car crash and an alcoholic binge.

Sand Paper is another great country songtitle, as Cassadee melodiously refuses to be changed. Built This House, written with the power duo Forest Glen Whitehead and Kelly Archer, is predictably great even if it’s a similar song in theme to The Bones by Maren Morris.

California Dreaming is a duet with her new beau, the great Sam Palladio, the only country star to make it in Nashville having come from Cornwall (via Kent). His recent film role was in Catherine the Great, the TV series with Helen Mirren. The pair’s harmonies work brilliantly on a song about Cassadee trying to forget about her ex. Cassadee’s voice, as you would expect from the winner of The Voice, needs no autotune and sounds pure and fragile. She sells the song well and I think the project is a success. There’ll be something for you here. 4/5, come back to the UK when you can, Cassadee!

RaeLynn – Baytown

This begins with Keep Up and ends with Bra Off, two songs that are chock full of personality and position the Voice finalist as an artist rather than a singer. I have loved both songs since I first heard them at Country2Country, having expected a set full of ballads like Love Triangle, her radio smash. Rather than deliver a full album, RaeLynn’s EP misses the fan favourites Rowdy, Queens Don’t and Tailgate (which I love) in favour of a six-track limit.

Me About Me previewed the EP. I admire the vibe of a song co-written by the magnificent Bob DePiero and has RaeLynn pleading for a boy to let her open up about her life, though there is a fab YOU GO GIRL twist at the end. Fake Girl Town, meanwhile, is one of those ballads women in country do so well. ‘There’s gotta be some real girls’ is RaeLynn’s plea over some soft guitar. Kudos for writing a song where a girl looks for girl friends, perfect for Galentine’s Day!

Brett James co-wrote Judgin To Jesus, on which RaeLynn raps verses and mentions Cardi B and whose chorus is anthemic and singalong. Emily Weisband helped her on the enormously fun Bra Off, which compares a breakup to breasts being free. Still Smokin made me smile from the opening piano riff; it’s a song about a summer fling, ‘one hell of a Saturday’. RaeLynn wrote it with Jason Derulo’s producer JJJJ-JR Rotem.

I only mention the co-writers to show the quality in the room while Racheal Lynn Davis aka RaeLynn put across what she wanted to say. This is a fine collection from a lady who opened for Maren Morris in her 2019 tour of the UK. She’s better than Maren as a singer and close to her as a songwriter. 5/5

Rascal Flatts – How They Remember You

Can seven tracks be called an EP?

We all know Rascal Flatts and their handsome lead singer Gary Le Vox from such anthems as Life is a Highway (actually a cover), What Hurts The Most and Bless The Broken Road, some of their 17 number ones. Their last album was a hodgepodge and that is the word used in a piece about this EP on SoundsLikeNashville.com. A brilliant cover of Through The Years, the interesting Quick Fast In a Hurry with Rachel Wammack and the middle of the dirt road title track (which is very American) were all released before the EP proper.

Feel It in the Morning opens with beer, bourbon and wine with Gary Le Vox essentially willing his friend to be hungover, to party so hard and be coursing with so much adrenaline that sleep is impossible. The musical backing, however, is so dull, so middle of the dirt road, it’s almost offensive. This is what Dan + Shay are using as a template to make millions of dollars.

Looking Back, a Thomas Rhett song in all but name as he wrote it, is anodyne and dull. Warmer, which at least has a key change, is a desperate plea by Gary to learn what his beloved thinks – ‘tell me if I’m getting warmer’ – and makes me think of a review yesterday in The Times in which Ronan Keating is so dull he makes Cliff Richard look edgy. This makes Ronan Keating like Cliff Richard. But then again I am not the target market.

Slip Away namechecks ‘Corona and a lime’ – just change the name of the beer!! – in a dull song about wanting to get on ‘anything that floats’ in a pool. It sounds like Dan + Shay, which is not a criticism. It’s at least enough to make my head nod. ‘Sip away before it slips away’ is a fun lyric.

It’s better than this sometimes plodding farewell. 3/5 but there’s a readymade replacement (clue: one of them is called Dan).

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Thomas Wesley Pentz – Snake Oil

Thomas Wesley Pentz was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1978 but grew up to become one of the top producers in the world. Under the name Diplo he worked on records by Major Lazer, LSD (with Sia), MIA, Beyonce, Jack U and Silk City. Best as a collaborator, he goes solo here in the Snake Oil project which has been trailed for the last year.

As of the album’s release Heartless has 125m Spotify listens, Lonely 116m and the remix of Old Town Road 68m, so the numbers don’t lie. This is global dance music made by a guy who could probably do country as well as he does EDM. On the album he enlists several pop acts – Julia Michaels, Jonas Brothers and Noah Cyrus – so I will limit myself to talking about country acts. The album’s intro features the fascinating Orville Peck blethering on like Johnny Cash over acoustic guitar to set the scene.

Cam pops up on the gorgeous So Long, co-written by nine writers including Hardy who is so HOT RIGHT NOW. Ryan Hurd, among others, worked on the very contemporary trap-pop-country-EDM mulch Heartless, which saw Morgan Wallen leap from country radio staple to pop act. See him be catapulted into Luke Combs territory in 2021.

Blanco Brown is on the atrocious Do Si Do. As for Old Town Road, Diplo sprinkles some of his dust on an already magical tune. Dance With Me puts together Young Thug and Thomas Rhett in a song with eight writers including Ryan Tedder and Zac Brown. It’s a pop song that positions TR as a southern pop star, not a country act. Hey, if Taylor Swift can go pop so can TR.

Fans of Major Lazer will like this, but it’s a bit fluffy. Zac himself can be found on Hometown along with Danielle Bradbery. It sounds like Thomas Rhett, but more boring. The album is background music for bachelorettes, made by men in suits to make money. 2/5

Gabby Barrett – Goldmine

Gabby Barrett is only 20 years old. Her debut hit I Hope was 100% Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood and Gabby’s career is following the Carrie model: appear on TV and win the heart of America; work really hard to ensure post-TV fame turns into a career; get a big number one; put out the album, with songs co-written with some big guns.

Goldmine is her album, produced by Ross Copperman who is best known as Brett Eldredge’s co-pilot and producer. The big names in the brackets include Jon Nite, Jimmy Robbins, Adam Doleac, Josh Osborne, Josh Kear and Emily Weisband. For no reason at all Charlie Puth pops up on a reworking of I Hope.

Gabby should become a big important star and this record introduces her to the masses in a way that talent show stars have been introduced from time immemorial. If you’re a 13-year-old girl you’ll lap this up, and your parents will like it too. Inoffensive to the point of offense, this is a fine album. The whistle notes she hits on Hall of Fame are extraordinary; Gabby co-wrote the song, something Carrie doesn’t get enough credit for in her own music.

We have songs called Thank God, Jesus & My Mama and Strong. Footprints on the Moon is 100% You Go Girl! Indeed, this is ‘You go, girl!’ pop music with a light country touch. Got Me, the new song with Shane & Shane, is proper Christian contemporary music, which is bound to be covered by Hillsong. Christian contemporary is a genre almost invisible to the majority of the US but is very important to record labels. TV star Chrissy Metz is going to put out her album just in time for Christmas, while Carrie Underwood is finally getting around to putting out her own Christmas collection.

The title track Goldmine is written by the heavyweight trio of Nicolle Galyon, Caitlyn Smith and Liz Rose. It’ll probably be a single, with its huge rock chorus full of Carrie-type notes and a lyric about how ‘kisses are riches and you hit the jackpot’. 3/5 but then it’s not aimed at me..

Lindsay Ell – Heart Theory

Lindsay Ell releases her second album of original material three years to the week after her debut The Project. Heart Theory is a journey from love to loss, starting with the poppy openers Hits Me and How Good, the poppy ballad I Don’t Love You and the excellent pop-rock of Want Me Back. Guitarist Dann Huff, a hero to Lindsay, is the producer and lets the instruments shine.

I’m loath to call this country music. This is rock made in Nashville and Lindsay, who is Canadian, could well make it in the pop landscape as her talent and musicality are enormous. But then Nashville likes talent and Lindsay is a phenomenal performer, so why not push it to country? It’s not, though, and she must realise that. It’s lyrical pop music which Taylor Swift and Kelsea fans will appreciate, especially the likes of Body Language of a Breakup.

Get Over You, Ready To Love and The Other Side (‘sure feels good on the other side of you’) are all magical pop songs – do you sense a theme in my criticism? – while Make You is a song with personal significance to Lindsay as she hopes to be an advocate for rape survivors.

The problem with Lindsay Ell, as with so many acts, is that she’s not just one thing. Lenny Kravitz had this problem: too much of a guitar hero for pop, too much of a songwriter for rock, too independent for country. She’s great all the same and if you love Keith Urban, check out Heart Theory. Unrated but worth a listen.

This is why I put “country(?)” in the title of this post. But since all three acts call themselves country, that’s what I call them too.

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Tenille Townes – The Lemonade Stand

The process of taking a new artist to market, as the business saying goes, can be long and arduous. Tenille Townes moved from Canada to Nashville and has been biding her time in recent years. Jersey on the Wall was our introduction to her folk-country stylings – Lori McKenna, Gretchen Peters and Mary Chapin Carpenter are all influences – but I loved White Horse and Somebody’s Daughter, both urgent tracks with smart lyrics.

Earlier this year we heard half of the album, including the above singles as well as a cover of Keith Urban’s Stupid Boy and original compositions I Kept The Roses and Holding Out For The One. The latter opens the album with fun rhythms and production, mixing live drums and loops, as Tenille sings about love and stuff in a sing-song manner. I Kept The Roses, meanwhile, reminds me of Jessie Buckley’s Wild Rose of the 2019 film. Carry tissues and put your heart over your sleeve.

Ahead of the release of the full album, Tenille spoke to the team at Destination Country, who remembered her UK debut at Country Music Week 2019. She is a natural interviewee and raconteur who like all Canadian entertainers is grateful for her platform. Seriously: Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Alanis Morrissette and Lindsey Ell. In comedy, the likes of Martin Short, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Colin Mochrie from Whose Line, Rick Moranis, Norm MacDonald, Dan Aykroyd and of course Lorne Michaels. The late pair of Phil Hartman, voice of Lionel Hutz, and John Candy, were also Canadians. Canada: punching above their weight.

We now hear the other half to make the whole album which is another Jay Joyce masterpiece. In terms of classic contemporary country, Jay and Dave Cobb are the sonic architects. Jay takes charge of The Lemonade Stand, which is named after a line in the chorus of SD. This isn’t Caylee Hammack/Dixie Chicks type music, but Tenille is a singer/songwriter in the Canadian tradition.

Her list of co-writers is impressive: Daniel Tashian, Luke Laird and Barry Dean on Somebody’s Daughter, Keelan Donovan – who guests on the terrific love song The Way You Look Tonight – and Sacha Skarbek, who co-wrote Wrecking Ball among many other pop classics and writes Find You here. That song, Where You Are and the welcoming Come As You Are – which Tenille played live for the Destination Country interview – are all close to the sort of pop-country we do in Britain. They are very fluffy and very catchy and prove why Tenille is such a star over here already.

Tenille can also do tender and serious. When I Meet My Maker picks up themes of Jersey On The Wall, with a tender lyric about angels and choirs and questions. Josh Kear, still counting the Need You Now money, helps Tenille write The Most Beautiful Things, which closes the album. It’s the sort of song Kelsea Ballerini would sing to be hashtag-serious; a series of images which serve to criticise people ‘Why do we close our eyes when we pray, cry, kiss?’ We don’t see beautiful things, but feel them. Then we get wind chimes. What a massive song. This is a brilliant, brilliant album, full of light and shade. No wonder she famously drove with her parents as a teenager to Nashville. This album has been a decade in the making and her next one will be even better. 5/5, eh!!

Caylee Hammack – If It Wasn’t For You

Caylee Hammack’s anticipated debut If It Wasn’t For You has been years in the making. I heard her song Family Tree about 18 months ago, which is very poppy but full of personal touches and lyrics like ‘pot luck lunch’, Tupperware and ‘high school high’. I like the idea that nothing’s gonna shake her family tree and I patiently waited, and waited, for the next thing she did.

Eventually in 2020 she hit big with Small Town Hypocrite, after the song Preciatcha. The rollout to the album has whetted my appetite for the full album, which means I’ve heard the magnificent Redhead, a fine set opener, and the elegant Forged in the Fire. Album opener Just Friends has also been knocking around for a while with its kickass tone and wild ending.

Not on the album is her duet with Alan Jackson, Lord I Hope This Day Is Good, as there is no room for it. Small Town Hypocrite, solo acoustic track Gold (recorded as if it’s a demo) and Looking for a Lighter are softer songs on the album, the latter with the audible sonic fingerprint of the best in the business, Hillary Lindsey. Just Like You and King Size Bed are country songs at their heart, with strong melodies. Fans of Miranda will love Just Like You, on which Caylee plays tomboy, and Sister, which is a downhome country song about family and stuff. The production on the likes of King Sized Bed and Preciatcha may be poppy but these songs would work at the Song Suffragettes night just with Caylee on an acoustic guitar.

The album ends with New Level of Life, a moving on and being strong song that summarises Caylee’s gifts for melody, production and vocal performance. This track and several others contain the S-word, so if you don’t like bad language listen to this album anyway and deal with it.

I wasn’t too fussed by Mean Something, a collaboration with Ashley McBryde and Tenille Townes that is obviously a record company move. In terms of those three acts, Tenille has the best voice, Ashley the best production and Caylee the best chance of being a household name. I hope people do hear her in the next few years, or else she’ll be stuck at Lauren Alaina level: always the bridesmaid.

Please note that Caylee co-produced this album, which is a sign of a confident artist who wants to be in control of her material. Unlike the next album I’m to discuss, If It Wasn’t For You is a country album, not a pop album (you may respectfully disagree). I think she’s the heir to Dolly and Reba, though it’s up to us to make her the star she deserves to be. 4/5

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Sara Evans – Copy That

Sara Evans has put out a record full of covers, Copy That, whose cover has her adjusting a blonde wig. The album starts with If I Can’t Have You, a sweet version of Don’t Get Me Wrong and the evergreen Come On Eileen. Before you start putting them onto WTF covers lists, listen. Sara’s voice brought joy to millions in the 2000s before she got too old for country radio.

Her voice slinks around the modern standard It’s Too Late, jaunty Fleetwood Mac song Monday Morning, John Mayer’s All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye. 6^th Avenue Heartache, written by Bob Dylan’s son Jakob, is on here too as well as a bit of fun. I realised My Sharona is almost uncoverable.  Hard To Say I’m Sorry morphs into September in a wigout. It’s a lot of fun.

The countryest thing here is I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, in which she ropes in Old Crow Medicine Show, while Phillip off of Little Big Town joins her on the Kenny Loggins song Whenever I Call You Friend, complete with key change for the chorus. Hank Cochrane’s She’s Got You, one of the 100 best songs ever written, is also here. On her own Born To Fly label, Sara deserves some love. 4/5 and a really great thing to do.

Mary Chapin Carpenter – The Dirt and the Stars

Mary Chapin Carpenter is still best known for poppy hits in the 90s like Passionate Kisses and Shut Up and Kiss Me and was the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year 1992 and 1993. Since 2000 she has shunned the charts and ploughed her own furrow, writing albums with a political slant. Having re-recorded some songs for her 2018 release Sometimes Just The Sky, this album is her first set of originals since 2012. Like Rodney Crowell, who has just turned 70, songwriters look up to Mary even if the albums do not sell in huge quantities.

The Dirt and the Stars is produced by Ethan Johns, who has worked on albums by Paul McCartney, The Staves, Tom Jones, Laura Marling and Kings of Leon, as well as being a songwriter in his own right). production is austere, letting the song breathe and sounding like the room it was recorded in: the hallowed Real World Studios owned by Peter Gabriel.

The opening track Farther Along and Further In reminds me of Ron Sexsmith or Laura Veirs with its gentle piano and melancholic timbre. There are some sweet guitar lines on It’s OK To Be Sad (‘how else would you know you’re alright?’) and there’s a shimmering sheen to All Broken Hearts Break Differently. This is the sort of music that’s not quite folk or rock or roots or country – it just is. It’s itself, a breathing piece of music with organic drums and sparkle that doesn’t come from a little box hooked up to a PC programme.

T-Bone Burnett and Dave Cobb let the players play, and Ethan Johns does too. This is why I am going on about how the album sounds – that’s also because many of the tracks contain instrumental sections where Mary gives way to her band. In fact, the nearest equivalent is probably Rosanne Cash, who also makes grown-up music for grown-ups and is ably assisted by her husband & producer John Leventhal.

Other fine tracks include the gentle Nocturne, with some fine acoustic picking; the rootsy Secret Keepers, about what new people are hiding or failing to disclose; Everybody’s Got Something, which seems to be about Mary’s depressive episode; and Between the Dirt and the Star, with some soft organ underscoring a lyric where Mary is 17 and lonely, with Wild Horses on the Radio (‘everything you’ll ever know is in the choruses’). It’s a superb reminiscing song with an extended guitar solo in the second half from a man called Duke Levine (who has also played with Rosanne Cash and Aimee Mann) that sums up the album nicely. For a fan of rootsy country-folky rocking American music, this is a fine album. 5/5

The Chicks – Gaslighter

The act formerly known as Dixie Chicks added to their tally of Top 10 albums next week by topping the charts with Gaslighter. It was their first release since Taking the Long Way in 2006, which helped them win acclaim and awards after they were cancelled for expressing an opinion and not shutting up and singing.

Here is the rollcall of writers on Gaslighter: Jack Antonoff, Teddy Geiger, Justin Tranter, Julia Michaels, Ariel Rechtshaid, Sarah Aarons, Ian Kirkpatrick, Ross Golan, Dan Wilson (who helped them win awards for Not Ready To Make Nice), St Vincent and a chap called Ben Abraham who wrote Praying with Kesha. These are all pop writers; in fact, there are no Nashville writers at all on this album, which is a wise move since Nashville effectively placed them on the blacklist back in 2003.

Over 12 tracks The Chicks set out their stall as veterans of popular music. It should not be ignored that these women are now in their forties or, in fiddle player Martie’s case, 50. It’s rare that women of that age have such a big push from their label, but then the Chicks are a special case. They were the biggest thing since Garth Brooks, when Wide Open Spaces, Fly and Home sold squillions at the turn of the century. The former has sold 13m in America, Fly 11m, Home 6m, meaning the band have two Diamond albums. Then came the demise of the recording industry, but Taking The Long Way still sold 2m in America, which means not everyone thought they were cancelled. The band toured in 2016 – including a date at London’s O2 – and put out a recording in 2017. They’re now streaming the full show on Youtube in case people have forgotten songs like Wide Open Spaces and Cowboy Take Me Away, which are now classics.

And so to Gaslighter. The title track was the first single and didn’t do much for me, though it’s a You Go Girl song that is a perfect opening track. The album track Tights on my Boat picks up the themes of the track Gaslighter – something happened on a boat and the woman was done wrong. Hope It’s Something Good seems to complete the trilogy: ‘We fought our wars with silence…Now that you’re done I get to write this song’. Only DCX can write this type of song…well, and Taylor Swift.

March March is terrific. The trio performed the song on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – or rather A Late Show as he is broadcasting from his lounge – and noted that back in March the band were called the Dixie Chicks. Natalie says ‘it was about time – we wanted to change it for a long time and we were using DCX for a long time’.

I will call them DCX as The Chicks isn’t a terrific name. They were toying with MEN – Martie, Emily, Natalie – or Puss In Boots. Every time Taylor Swift talks about Trump in the next few months, we must realise she is only able to do so because the world has caught up with what DCX were saying back in 2003. Having the Chicks sing on Soon You’ll Get Better on her last album will ensure many of Taylor’s fans will check out, and love, Gaslighter.

The second single Julianna Calm Down was similarly meh-ful, sounding like something Pasek and Paul might write for one of their teen-targeted musicals, but with two minutes of confetti at the end. It’s not aimed at me. The track which was pushed to coincide with the launch of the DCX album is Sleep At Night, track two, in which DCX ask ‘how do you sleep at night?’ to someone who done them wrong. You go girl.

Texas Man opens with a neat little riff before the lyric enters about love and stuff. He needs ‘patient hands’ to catch a chick. You can tell Julia Michaels has some sonic fingerprints on this. For Her is a Sarah Aarons topline – from the lady who brought us GIRL and The Middle for Maren Morris – and this song For Her is a plea for ‘someone who cares’ to be ‘a little bit kinder and a lot less guarded’. The middle eight – ‘stand up, show love for her’ – is anthemic. When the band tour this will be an enormous part of their set: their audience are girls and women and they know it. Sarah is one of the top songwriters in the world and DCX do this understated song justice over five minutes.

Ditto Everybody Loves You. This is an outside write from Joe Spargur – aka Joe London, who produces Ross Golan’s And The Writer Is podcast – Charlotte Lawrence (who has just turned 20 and is also the daughter of Bill Lawrence, the showrunner of Scrubs) and Hayley Gene Penner (whose dad Fred Penner was a beloved Canadian children’s entertainer and recipient of the Order of Canada). Not that any of that matters. This is a stunning piece of music.

My Best Friend’s Weddings has a recurring ‘Go it alone’ chant in the middle over some soft banjo and fiddle. It’s a song made for Youtube montages – again, the band knows their audience. Young Man is the same, except a mum’s song for her son. Bring tissues: ‘My blues aren’t your blues: it’s up to you.’ Maybe this is even better than For Her. Natalie’s vocals are sublime, especially on the couplet about storms and truth. St Vincent aka Annie Clark is a co-writer here, so if any of her fans hear this track they will enjoy the rest of the album.

Here are some of the words used in the final track Set Me Free: ‘Sick from hurt’; ‘tethered’; ‘untangle me’; ‘decency’; ‘exhausting’; ‘broke my spirit’; and, finally, ‘there’s a good guy in there’.

This is the album Taylor Swift would make if she’d broken up with all those boys in her forties, not her twenties. As it is, this is grown-up pop music from three grown-ups who will delight their grown-up fans with a grown-up album. It’s not perfect so 4/5 from me, but I am ashamed I am not from Texas. Remember, when they got cancelled for telling the truth? Now you have to speak up if you want a career. Funny old world…

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Mac McAnally – Once In A Lifetime

Mac McAnally, the musician’s musician, released Once in a Lifetime, his sixteenth and first album of original material in five years. His real name is Lyman Corbitt McAnally Jr – Lyman, son of Lyman – and I first saw him at Country2Country, not knowing anything about the man who wrote Back Where I Came From and a friend of Jimmy Buffett. He calls himself Nobody but he is somebody to me.

Changing Channels is an old Jimmy Buffett song first released in 1989, which was written by Jimmy and Mac. It opens with a line about basket cases! I’d never heard it before but Parrotheads (fans of Jimmy) will love it. Just Right is a Buffett-by-numbers song that sounds like 90 degrees in the shade, with a light reggae beat, a whistling outro and lots of stuff about islands, ‘good times’ and everything that has made Jimmy Buffett a millionaire several times over. I imagine Mac earns a good living too.

If you like country music, and want to waste away 40 minutes in Margaritaville, this album is for you. But Mac can do soft too: Just Like It Matters is a waltz which is full of pedal steel and heartache, as Mac tells of a girl leaving him. Thrown in for good measure is a cover of John Lennon’s song Norwegian Wood, complete with mystical drones, and the flight of fancy First Sign of Trouble, about the perils of doing anything when you’re singing about doing nothing.

Check out Mac’s live set done under quarantine in June where he premiered several songs from Once In A Lifetime including the chuggy Almost All Good, which Kenny Chesney could turn into a number one. ‘We’re just trying to wear that First Amendment out!’ is a fun line.

The 12 tracks include Once in a Lifetime, which features Drake White, who has been poorly these past few years. Good Guys Win is a Chesney title-in-waiting too, with a song set to a smooth rhythm and rhyming ‘disillusion’ and ‘turn on the news’ before changing key. It’s perfect on a 90-degree day. Brand New Broken Heart – fiddle, mandolin, a cracking middle eight and a Mumford-y guitar part – is divine.

The album closes with The Better Part of Living, a credo in which Mac tells of the lessons he has learned. I’m glad I came across him a few years ago. It’s not too late to fall for Mac McAnally. Once in a Lifetime is his new, 5/5 album, out on Mailboat Records!

Mo Pitney – Ain’t Lookin Back

Mo Pitney is an apostle of George Strait. Ain’t Lookin Back is a good title of his second album, which comes out five years after Behind This Guitar, an album of traditional country songs expertly sung. Boy and a Girl Thing should have been a number one but the trend in 2015 was, as you know, unfavourable to traditional music. The time is ripe, as Jon Pardi and Josh Turner would agree, to bring it back and Mo is well placed to find a huge audience.

Listening through to the album it sounds brilliant, with tender production from Jim Moose Brown and warmth in every syllable. ‘I didn’t come here to be famous’ is the album’s opening line, setting out Mo’s stall with a song in which he says ‘God said I’ll make me a music man’. Jamey Johnson, another music man who shuns fame and fortune, is a guest vocalist on a song Mo co-wrote.

I love the poppy pair of Ain’t Bad for a Good Ol Boy and Local Honey, as well as the Old Dominion-written Plain and Simple, which is a lovely gift to their fellow top songwriter. Other legends contribute to others such as the funky love song Right Now With You (Paul Overstreet) and Boy Gets The Girl (Tim ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ Nichols), which takes the idea of a romcom and runs with it. The title track of Ain’t Lookin Back sounds like the long road on which Mo is on – bring back road songs in country music, I say!

The album’s closing track, Jonas, is a Dean Dillon co-write. It’s a spiritual song about Jesus that needs to be heard to be appreciated. It ends a mature album which should not be ignored. 5/5

Eric Paslay – Nice Guy

Eric Paslay is a Nice Guy, according to his LP. Chris Stapleton is also a nice guy and a multimillionaire thanks to his status as songwriter’s songwriter who broke out as an artist. Eric has written loads of hits for the likes of Love & Theft, Jake Owen, Eli Young Band and Lady A but his own career has, until this week, numbered a studio LP which came out in FEBRUARY 2014 and a live album.

After an EP earlier this year, Nice Guy emerges with eight new tracks which follow his cover of Pill In Ibiza, single Heartbeat Higher and two great tunes Boat in a Bottle and On This Side of Heaven, which is really tremendous and a tearjerker. I also love Endless Summer Dream, which takes the feel of Even If It Breaks Your Heart.

Off the Edge of the Summer opens with the line ‘whispering wishes into wine bottles’ so if you like your song well written, Eric is your man. Co-writers include Kristian Bush (Just Once, which is middle of the dirt road and could be a Tim McGraw tune), Craig Wiseman (who is also a nice guy and helped Eric write the groovy title track), Caitlyn Smith (who also provides gorgeous uncredited harmonies on Under Your Spell) and the great Rodney Clawson on the equally great acoustic ballad Fingertips. This one is a father’s lullaby to his child and deserves to be heard.

Wild and Young picks up the soft acoustic tempo of Fingertips – remember when albums used to be sequenced?? – and is a first dance song where Eric compliments his beloved for staying young even as time passes. It’s gorgeous and immaculately produced by Eric himself. Likewise album closer Woman Like Her (‘is good for a man’) which is another Tim McGraw sort of tune with a singalong middle section. Eric knows his stuff and I love this album – 4/5 – but next time don’t take SIX YEARS. Please.

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Florida Georgia Line – 6-Pack

I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining who the band known as FGL are. Their new EP follows Can’t Say I Ain’t Country, album number four for Tyler and Brian. They are husbands, fathers, entrepreneurs with their own whiskey and record label imprint and, of course, the progenitors of the Bro Country movement. Now the trend has moved on, what is their place in the market?

The 6-Pack EP tries to answer that question. Lead single I Love My Country is 100% Short Skirt Weather by Kane Brown, so I can discount that. Notable is the fact that the chorus comes in after 28 seconds, so at least they don’t bore us and get to the chorus.

Beer:30 is a joke. I think Tyler knows it’s a joke: ‘It’s beer (pause) thirty and I’m (pause) thirsty’. His delivery is lower in pitch than usual and this is what country sounds like when it goes all rap. Thomas Rhett did this with Vacation.

Ain’t Worried Bout It is a Peach Pickers song, or at least Ben and Dallas from the collective. This means it’s a down home southern boy tune like Small Town Boy, which is produced with contemporary relevance by Corey Crowder. Trucks and the Lord and Friday night and coolers and ‘my baby’s here’. The chorus rocks and the vocals are sweet. After all those Joey Moi guitars it’s synths and beds for FGL now.

US Stronger is a patriotic anthem that arrives into the marketplace as Joe Biden is preparing his campaign against the President. Without discussing politics, FGL blether on about America. I prefer the Team America anthem but this is a silky smooth song about heroes and getting up when you’re knocked down. How awful that sounds in light of this week’s events [concerning George Floyd’s murder]. US Stronger is what FGL sound like when writing a Shane McAnally song. SEGUE!

Shane worked on Second Guessing, the song that resulted from FGL’s appearance on Songland, the NBC show which is live A&R on TV. On the show you see the original song performance, the reworking and the final product. Griffen Palmer presents a slow acoustic driven song which Shane applauds when the kicker comes in the chorus: ‘I ain’t spent one second guessing’. Shane in fact gets angry at a hook. We know it’s a good song – Griffen also wrote Keith Urban’s new song Polaroid – and the guys from Songland just punch it up.

The reworked version rejigs the opening lines and speeds up the delivery to make it sounds like an FGL song, or an FGL as written by Shane McAnally. It’s a wedding song that is perfect for two men who used to cruise and who now want to dedicate their lives to their wives.

Countryside, meanwhile, is an outside write from three writers who I guess are on FGL’s imprint Tree Vibez. It puts an acoustic guitar loop over an electronic drum loop. ‘Downtown looks a little busy’ so let’s go to the countryside. It sounds like Thomas Rhett. The EP is fine, but Beer:30 is atrocious. What a frustrating act. Beer:30 and Second Guessing cancel each other out. Where on earth do FGL go from here? 3/5, but without Beer:30 it would be a 4.

Kane Brown – Mixtape volume 1

Kane Brown’s seven-track EP Mixtape volume 1 brings together his releases from 2020, including Cool Again, Worldwide Beautiful, Be Like That (with rapper Swae Lee, crooner Khalid and the line ‘I wish I hadn’t met your ass’) and Last Time I Say Sorry, featuring the black Buble, John Legend.

The new songs include the cutesy Worship You, which compares a girl to an angel or deity (thus breaking the second commandment). ‘If you were a religion I don’t know what I’d do…’ I stand by my theory that Christian music and country music are the same product with different nouns.

BFE, meanwhile, is a country chugger with some fiddle – violins are so hot right now!! – as Kane rap-sings like Toby Keith. It’s good fun and it segues into Didn’t Know What Love Was, which opens with some jazzy guitar chords and a Thomas Rhett-style vocal delivery. The chorus is wide open and well produced by Dann Huff, who knows what good music sounds like.

The songs are fine but I can tell Kane Brown is a human algorithm. You like r’n’b ballads, songs about how you love your wife, country hoedowns, anthems for universal brotherhood (Worldwide Beautiful), songs like One Thing Right AND rap-leaning pop? Then come to Kane Brown, an artist without an identity because streaming platforms like streams not artistry. He’s got his fans but I will never forget the fact that this kid who used to pop country covers on Youtube is country music’s token black guy. I’m sure his accountant is happy. 3/5

Jimmie Allen – Bettie James

Jimmie Allen follows up his Mercury Lane album of 2018 with a duets mini-album, which he’s calling Bettie James after his grandma Bettie and dad James, who have both passed on. Interestingly, the EP features Nelly, Mickey Guyton, Charley Pride and Darius Rucker. Spot the connection. (They’re all not white.)

Before discussing those songs, there are three performed with non-black artists. We’ve heard This Is Us, written by Noah Cyrus and Tyler Hubbard among others and featuring Miley on vocals. It’s boring. Made For These is a ballad by numbers about keeping on and being stronger, perhaps informed by Jimmie’s attempts to be a star in a town that doesn’t usually let people of his skin colour be stars. McGraw, meanwhile, does his thing effectively but not as well as Humble and Kind or Live Like You Were Dying. It’s boring.

Freedom Was a Highway, with Brad Paisley, is a reminiscin’ song about the days when ‘time was made for wastin…livin for Friday’. Brad does what he does, singing about fenceposts and hiphop songs (he was a country musician as a teenager so I’m not buying it). He is contractually obliged to play a guitar solo. It’s good but boring.

Incredibly the first voice on the EP doesn’t belong to Jimmie but to Nelly. Opener Good Times Roll is a fun, boring song about nothing in particular over a dull chord cycle and beat that at least sets the scene. It does make me wonder whose EP this is: Jimmie’s, or ‘black people in Nashville’.

Track two is Drunk and I Miss You, with Mickey Guyton. Jimmie’s drunk and he misses Mickey, with Ray LaMontagne on the speakers. Mickey misses Jimmie too, which is nice. Boring.

Why Things Happen is the Big Important Song that proves Nashville as a town are listening to black people (and thus making money). Darius sings the opening couplet, Charley Pride adds a line, then Jimmie comes in with a question. The lyric is vague enough not to be about black people dying but the point is obvious. All lives matter, and black lives should matter as much as white lives. That’s country music and if Nashville doesn’t change the conversation within a year country music will probably be cancelled. It doesn’t help that muppets are putting on gigs and people are becoming infected with Covid from parties on Broadway.

When This Is Over was written by Jon Nite and Laura Veltz and features Tauren Wells, The Oak Ridge Boys and Rita Wilson. Tauren is a new name to me, a successful Christian artist and a Texan worship leader; Rita is a singer in her own right and the wife of Tom Hanks. Rita takes the first chorus and it’s another Big Important Song. Jimmie introduces the Oak Ridge Boys to sing over piano chords for the final chorus. He sounds sad that he has to give way but the voices are stunning. It’s a shame we have to wait 22 minutes to hear this song.

This EP has so little Jimmie Allen on it that it’s not his. I feel sorry for him – he’s obviously caught in some ugly politics and this isn’t what he wants. He wrote several of the tracks here but this isn’t a Jimmie Allen EP – it’s a Nashville EP, an album by algorithm that makes me uncomfortable but also deeply suspicious of what happens next in country music. I feel awkward giving it a review but, for the songs and the production, it’s 3/5 and that’s very generous. Do better next time.

Update: I have been assured by someone close to the project that Jimmie did have editorial control of Bettie James.

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Tim McGraw – Here On Earth

In 2019 Saving Country Music called Way Down by Tim McGraw ‘aggressively forgettable…a [sexual act redacted] song disguised as a Southern anthem’. Tim is 53 years old.

In 2017, the year he turned 50, Tim duetted with wife Faith Hill, with a stadium tour that also came to the UK for C2C, but Here On Earth is his first solo release since 2015’s Damn Country Music. That album, featuring Humble and Kind, was released on Big Machine, which Tim McGraw left and has since re-signed. This means there is no place for his radio smashes from 2019, Neon Church and Thought About You.

Because he is a guaranteed big seller, songwriters in town answer the call for ‘a Tim McGraw song’ that goes round the publishers. This is how Big Sellers cement their place in the market. You know a Kenny Chesney song, or a Jason Aldean song, or even a Garth Brooks song, when you hear it and this album takes 16 tries to show what a Tim McGraw song is.

The ones we’ve heard so far include the single I Called Mama, Hallelujahville, Good Taste In Women and 7500 OBO aka Tim McGraw calls mum, Tim McGraw bigs up small towns, Tim McGraw is a lucky schlub and Tim McGraw sells his truck full of memories.

The brilliant thing about 7500 OBO is it lays out what this album is: it’s a Tim McGraw album for fans of Tim McGraw. See if you can spot the quote of his song When The Green Grass Grows, as well as the lyrical reference to Shotgun Rider and Let Her Go. This is what happens when someone sees ‘Tim McGraw song’ on a pitch sheet and literally sticks to the brief.

You know that A List songwriters are getting some paycheck. Tom Douglas shows up in the writing credits, and he is one of country’s greatest writers. Along with fellow legends Aimee Mayo and Jaren Johnston of The Cadillac Three, he writes album closer Doggone, a Tim McGraw sings about his friend in heaven song; along with Allan Shamblin (The House That Built Me, I Can’t Make You Love Me) and newcomer Andy Albert, Tom enables Tim to sing how people should ‘smell the daisies/ everything else is gravy’ on a song with the word ‘epiphany’ in the opening line and how ‘happiness is a choice you choose’.

Hold You Tonight is smooth MODR writers Ross Copperman and Jon Nite with the lyric ‘I can’t fix the world but I can hold you tonight. Tim must have done this type of song on every album, right down to the guitar sounds. Maybe his next Best Of can be called A Shoulder to Cry On.

The one after that can be I Love You Faith. The latest Tim McGraw love songs of devotion are Damn Sure Do, which is a smart wedding song, and Hard To Stay Mad At, written this time by three heavyweights: Lori McKenna, Shane McAnally and Luke Laird. It’s a wonderful love song which quotes the proverb about never going to bed angry.

I love the string section, arranged by Beck’s dad David Campbell, which can be found on Hallelujahville and the opening track, LA. This is a country album and yet Tim is singing what sounds like a Blake Shelton cast-off (Blake’s been based in LA for the Voice for a while). Plus, Kelsea Ballerini had her own song called LA; stop trying to make LA happen, country music.

Not From California, meanwhile, is written by the Warren Brothers Brett and Brad and the Hummon clan, father Marcus and son Levi. It is presumably there to erase any thought of me going off on country musicians singing about LA. Stop trying to make not being from LA happen, country music!

Don’t forget that Tim McGraw is from Louisiana. If he were a cowboy, he sings on If I Was a Cowboy, he would ‘ride off into the sunset’ rather than drink his sorrows away in a bar. I just don’t believe he can ever separate from his beloved Faith Hill. His whole brand is that he is a loyal, sober, attractive husband and father. Maybe this fitted the brief ‘Tim McGraw needs a song which calls him a cowboy but which isn’t actually about him being a real cowboy’. Nonetheless, the guitar squeals effectively.

Ditto the understated pair of War of Art and Doggone which, when they come round as tracks 15 and 16, are the songs pitched as Tim McGraw singing about being a singer and Tim McGraw misses a dead friend which, sadly, I missed was a dog which has gone. That’s country music right there, and there’s a lovely line in the chorus about ‘Red Wing boots’ and ‘watercolor memories’, which is better than those in the forgotten Way Down whose chorus repeats ‘way down’ 15 times.

Nor am I sure about him trying on new hats. On Chevy Spaceship he sounds like Brad Paisley, especially in the line ‘catch a buzz lightyear’. Tim McGraw has previously sung a song called Kristofferson and here he sings about Sheryl Crow, his fellow Big Machine artist; Tim’s girl is ‘gonna be stuck in my head forever’. Jason Aldean’s buddies Neil Thrasher and Wendell Mobley write this – so maybe this is an Aldean cast-off.

Look, I know Big Machine have to make money and the market will ensure that Tim’s fans flock to Here On Earth. This is because it has been designed to sound like Tim McGraw. There are no vocoders or even too many processed loops. He isn’t chasing a trend. I would cut four tracks so that the overly long 16 becomes a manageable 12. His album launch special streams at 7pm Nashville time. The album is full of good stuff but it’s just too long. 4/5 but Tim will remain a multimillionaire.

Lori McKenna – The Balladeer

In the week of Taylor Swift’s album release, there was another folky country act with an album on the racks. What else is there to say about Lori McKenna? Her album The Balladeer is her eleventh and the first since she turned 50 in 2018. Lest we forget, she won the GRAMMY and CMA Song of the Year award for Girl Crush, Humble and Kind and was ACM Songwriter of the Year 2018. The Bird and the Rifle was nominated for the GRAMMY for Best Americana Album, and follow-up The Tree was up for Album of the Year at the Americana Music Awards.

The beautiful song People Get Old was up for Song of the Year in the same contest in which she was against herself thanks to her work on the song By Degrees. In 2020, her contribution to A Star Is Born, Always Remember Us This Way, lost out in the Song of the Year category to Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy. (Lover by Taylor Swift was also nominated.) Her song It All Comes Out In The Wash, written with Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose (the trio known as the Love Junkes), lost the Best Country Song GRAMMY to Tanya Tucker’s Bring My Flowers Now. So Lori knows her stuff when it comes to music and lyrics: she is the songwriter’s songwriter.

The pre-released songs from The Balladeer, which is being released through Thirty Tigers, include When You’re My Age (written with and featuring her fellow Love Junkies) and Good Fight. Both are grown-up songs for grown-up listeners. The title track is stunning, especially the middle eight where two new chords add a sense of unease to a three-act song which actually mirrors the plot of A Star Is Born.

Opening track This Town is a Woman is a more mature version of Body Like a Back Road, with much better lyrics. Two Birds is also a Love Junkies song that I won’t spoil but men don’t come out from it very well. The Dream is mysterious, with only ‘you and him’ mentioned in Lori’s dream. ‘He was one of a kind/ You would have loved him if you were born in his time.’ It could be about Lori’s mum, who was unable to hold her grandson, or her husband, ‘wearing the coat from 85’, talking to his never-mother-in-law. ‘Damn long view’ is sung over some lush chords, thanks to the production of the great Dave Cobb. The outro is sensational too, matching Dave’s work with Jason Isbell, who is one of very few songwriters in Lori’s class.

Marie ‘looks more like our mother, prettier and softer’ and it’s an ode to Lori’s older sister. ‘We both got the same sized shoes but no-one’s ever walked in mine but me…and Marie.’ Something happens in the third verse, something Lori has written about before, that floors the listener: if there was a country music anthology of lyrics, this song would be in it. This is a proper country song written by a master of the form: her life, in a song.

Stuck in High School is a reminiscin’ song about how as a kid you ‘try on every shoe and you stand in every shadow/ Hope you find yourself somewhere between the first pew and the back row’. Even when you’re 50, that kid is still there, asking you if those dreams came true or if you’re stuck in high school with all the dreams and ambition of a young pup…

Final track Till You’re Grown, which ends with Elton Johnnish piano, is Humble and Kind Part 2: smoking won’t be cool, tattoos are stupid so don’t get one, ‘running away won’t look like a cure to anything that really hurts’ and ‘time moves faster than you think…’

Uphill could be a spiritual song or a mother’s song to her child. My eyes were moist by the end of the first stanza; damn Lori. ‘Hard times and landslides are part of life…‘I’ll walk with you even if it’s uphill’. It’s beautiful, just beautiful. Though it won’t get the streaming numbers that Folklore will, it equals and surpasses Taylor’s effort. 5000/5.

In this series, I will present the reviews of big albums reviewed weekly as part of Country Jukebox Jury. You can hear me talk about all types of country – poppy, bluegrass, rock, Texan, Canadian and British – every week at Facebook.com/acountrywayoflife

Kenny Chesney – Here And Now

Every time Kenny Chesney releases an album it’s a big event. He seems to follow the David Bowie Rule: One for them, one for me. His last album Songs for the Saints raised funds for the British Virgin Islands and only had one big single, the anthemic Get Along. Here and Now is his 19^th album which will be toured as Chillaxification.

In the modern way we’ve heard half of the album: Tip of my Tongue is the filthy Ed Sheeran co-write with one of his famous double choruses; We Do and the title track are a perfect pair to kick off the album; lighter-in-the-air slowies Knowing You (co-written by the great Brett James) and serious album closer Guys Named Captain (a 100% write from James T Slater) are both Sensitive Kenny songs which will join There Goes My Life, The Good Stuff, Don’t Blink and many other Sensitive Kenny songs in his canon.

Everyone She Knows comes from the folks that brought us many big hits: Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne and Ross Copperman. ‘She’s stuck between 17 and everyone she knows’ is such a McAnally lyric. It’s about how a lady who sees all her friends getting married and having babies while she hangs with the boys. It’ll be a smash hit and sounds brilliant, musically and sonically. Kenny’s vocal is believeable and it’ll be a big live favourite.

Wasted and Beautiful World are both co-written by Kenny’s good friend David Lee Murphy. The former sees Kenny talking to an old-time singer who recalls the good times in bars and cars, living the high life and ‘the rest I just wasted!’ A country song with a punchline! More on that later. Beautiful World is a slow song that becomes another ‘Kenny sitting in a hammock’ song, with new strings on his guitar and the jukebox playing. Sometimes it’s good to ‘feel so small’ and realise you are a drop in the ocean. Kenny has built a strong brand that makes him squillions of dollars, the Don’t Worry Be Happy country guy laughing all the way to the beach. Am I being cynical?

Heartbreakers sounds like a Chesney song from its opening riff. He lists the names of the girls he didn’t get with, a fun look at love. ‘I bet they’re still beautiful!’ You Don’t Get To is a mid-tempo pop song co-written by the great Barry Dean in which Kenny says he’s ‘not the same me but you’re still the same you’.

Someone to Fix is a Jon Nite co-write, which means a tender song with some melancholy and a proper chorus, delivered expertly. Happy Does is a happy-clappy beach song about being grateful for having tattoos, wives, songs on the radio, rope swings, palm trees and drinking beer. It’s almost a pastiche of a Kenny Chesney ‘happy song’ but it’s effective. The album will please long-time fans of Kenny, who is now in his fifties, and the first half is especially strong. His best album in at least a decade. 4/5

Luke Bryan – Born Here Live Here Die Here

Luke Bryan is probably radio’s biggest star of the last decade, with tons of hits and a big wide grin. In fact, he has now had 30 (by my count) on his own or with other acts.

Luke has taken the Blake/Keith approach and put his brand in front of middle America thanks to TV, and a lot more people know Luke Bryan than the country audience whom he was initially marketed to. Remember he used to put out a Spring Break EP and do tours of farms – he’s still the same guy but he now makes tripe that goes to radio. Album seven is out now.

Knockin Boots, What She Wants Tonight and One Margarita are all fun songs about love, sex and drinking. Build Me a Daddy is sentimental gloop that aims its sights on your tearducts. None is anywhere near his Top 10, which would include the likes of Drink A Beer, Do I and Dirt Road Diary.

The title track is a blood brothers song that sounds like lighters in the air. Luke, for all his booty shaking, is to Georgia what Madness are to North London or the Ramones are to New York. Songs like this boost Luke’s localism – I believe him when he sings about boots and roots and local pride, regardless of political allegiance. ‘Same dirt, same church, same beer’ and REAL drums – great job by all concerned, including young writer Jameson Rodgers. His voice is marketable and he sounds like a man who hunts and fishes.

Then it goes into the schlocky One Margarita and the spell is broken.

The musical theme of this album is… middle of the dirt road, a genre I have made up to convey safe, corporate music. That doesn’t mean it’s bad: Too Drunk to Drive is a Luke co-write that chugs along effectively in a fashion; Down To One, which is the only contribution to this album by Luke’s buddy Dallas Davidson, closes the album. It’s terrific and very on brand: ‘We were down to 1am, listening to one more song’ leading to ‘one hand in mine, one beautiful smile’. It’s a country song that rewards listeners for getting to the end of the album, like Dirt Road Diary on Crash My Party.

Where are we Goin, which Luke wrote with top singer/songwriter Brent Cobb, and Little Less Broken are almost Lionel Richie songs – I wonder if Lionel has given him tips on American Idol – although the latter also reminds me of Midland’s contemporary vintage style. For a Boat is also AC country in which Luke declares himself ‘too broke for a boat’ as a kid, spending Sundays with God and Saturdays with Dad. I like the specificity of ‘Evinrude’, which is a type of motor.

Overall this is a fine 4/5 album without many tush-shaking tracks like Move, She’s a Hot One or Country Girl, which are all the same song. Now 44, Luke has definitely moved into the veterans tier of acts that houses Brad Paisley, Tim McGraw and Chesney.