The Backlog: May Flowers
twelve country albums from artists you've heard of... and a few you haven't.....
Backlog vol 2 is here. Mostly albums, a couple EP’s. Maybe I’m turning into a curmudgeon, but not much this year has really gripped me yet. Or maybe I’m not looking in the right places. If you have any recommendations, please forward them along. Also, a contemporary mystery. Why do female artists love no caps or ALL CAPS for their albums and song titles?
Behold, the subgenre guide:
1- Traditional country
2- Country rock
3- Modern country
4- Pop country
5- Southern pop
Sunshine State — McCoy Moore
Tracks/Time: 14 songs, 45 minutes | Subgenre: 3, 4
Moore had an EP last year that showed real promise, and a developing aesthetic sensibility is somewhat evident. It oscillates between the limited mainstream forms of acceptable country music without indulging in all the excess, letting his straightforward vocals be the identifying characteristic. Moments of sharp songwriting, but ultimately this is no more than a pleasant, competent listen, potential appearing in flashes without much more.
Favorites: Chesney on a Beach, Every Single Summer
Least favorite: In Here, Out There (feat. Cole Swindell)
Real Damn Deal — Braxton Keith
Tracks/Time: 15 songs, 51 minutes | Subgenre: 1
I’ve been a fan of Keith’s for some years now and actually predicted back in the halcyon days of 2022 that he was destined for something more. This appears to be that moment. He’s used the intervening years to sharpen his social media game, his artistic persona, and his technical skills. A happy-go-lucky paired with traditionalist, no-frills sensibility comes through in spades. With a traditionalist, records are not really about innovation; what matters far more is execution, which lines you pick, how well they align with you, and how well you fill them in. This does all that and doesn’t limit itself to the simplest version of that that could have looked like. A genuine year end contender, watch out Zach Top.
Favorites: Mrs. Green, I Dreamed You Dreamed of Me, I Own This Bar
Least favorite: — Prescription
Get Around Boy — Lakelin Lemmings
Tracks/Time: EP | Subgenre: 2, 4
Solid, if generic, early-career work. I’d be curious to see this teaser fleshed out into a full record. Nice voice.
Favorites: Keep the Faith
Least favorite: American Dreamin’
The Sound of Roses — Muscadine Bloodline
Tracks/Time: 16 songs, 57 minutes | Subgenre: 3
A re-recording of an assortment with a gentle, wedding-style string accompaniment. The back half goes fully instrumental. Some songs are genuinely rendered more interesting by the stripped arrangement, allowing lyrics room to breathe. Ultimately, this feels less like a creative statement and more like a tool to let fans play these songs at weddings and receptions. The purpose is hard to argue with, but the artistic stakes aren’t really apparent.
Heavy on the Soul — Ty Myers
Tracks/Time: 17 songs, 59 minutes | Subgenre: 1, 2, 3, 4
The blues-tinged country of Myers’ debut blooms into full-on blues here. He’s more than enough a vocalist and emotionalist, and grapples well with slightly more complicated material. A delightfully presented, full-throated project. The sense of a young teenage artist presenting things well beyond his years is still nigglingly there and hasn’t been fully squared away. The label feels present, pushing things in a direction, and Myers goes all in. Whether that’s a sustainable arrangement remains to be seen.
(Editor note, this reads harsher then I intended, just evaluating by how many songs made it on to my liked list, this is an excellent and ery worthwhile album, perfect for both easy listening and deep vibing. There’s just the one niggling quirk. If it doesn’t bother you, this might be list topping for you.)
Favorites: Pedestal, Woman, Through a Screen, Two Trains (feat. Marcus King), Southbound, Gone To Long, Good Morning Paris
Least favorite: Come On Over Baby
I HOPE THIS HELPS — Alana Springsteen
Tracks/Time: 15 songs, 49 minutes | Subgenre: 5, 4, 2
She’s clearly working through something on this record, childhood, relationships, faith, a whole tangled mess. The problem is that all this introspection gets placed into an aggressive pop structure that badly undercuts. Competent, certainly, but with an internal contradiction baked in. Which, considering the messiness she is processing, maybe fits more than I am giving it credit for.
Favorites: love me anyway, same God, how to swim
Least favorite: fight like this
Another Year Older — Larry Fleet ‘
Tracks/Time: 11 songs, 38 minutes | Subgenre: 1, 2, 3
About what you’d expect, just bit shorter. Small-c conservative, family-values type of artist, and the music lives from the heart of that, nostalgia as the glue, messaging is authentic, runtime tighter than his more bloated prior output. The formula continues successfully, letting Fleet be his best self within those parameters, and that’s enough.
Favorites: Baseball on the Radio, If I Still Was, Whole Lot of Little Things
Least favorite: More of That
Back to Life — Cordovas
Tracks/Time: 9 songs, 28 minutes | Subgenre: 1, 2, 3
A bit of a mess, all over the place, and that’s by design. After all, it is Americana. The musicality and sense of dynamics are there, but the outcome suffers for it. The record feels disjointed without much to hold it together as a whole. The moments that work are genuine. I’ll admit some of the harshness here is my own fault, as I’ve been a low-key fan for years, and my expectations are probably doing some of the damage. It still sounds great….most of the time.
Favorites: Wings, Josefina
Least favorite: Lost at Sea
Wild — Ashley McBryde
Tracks/Time: 11 songs, 39 minutes | Subgenre: 2, 3
Starts off with a real blast, but lives most in the middle. Weighty battling themes work in tension, giving the best material genuine weight. The production overplays its hand in spots. A few tracks would have landed harder stripped down, and inconsistency in writing shows in uneven stretches. When it connects, though, it connects at a generational level. McBryde’s vocal control has maybe never been better.
Favorites: Bottle Tells Me So, Hand Me Downs, Behind Bars
Least favorites: Arkansas Mud, Creosote
Watterson Hall — William Clark Green
Tracks/Time: 14 songs, 50 minutes | Subgenre: 3
Green is an artist I’ve always personally struggled to connect with despite the acclaim, but here he leans into the songwriting, and his affection for slightly more disorganized country and Texas rock becomes a feature rather than a liability. He snarls and growls his husky vocals through the record, touching on slightly deeper content, landing himself on the accessible end of the Texas split, between the traditionalist-straightforward side and the more convoluted, poetry-heavy side. That suits him. It doesn’t get in the way.
Favorites: Whole Lotta Lubbock, Where the Wild Things Are, Something You Would Die For
Least favorites: Hawks Don’t Fly With Chickens, Drinkin’ and Drivin’
GENERATIONAL HEARTBREAK — Ashley Anne
Tracks/Time: 6 songs, 21 minutes | Subgenre: 4,5
The voice is quite nice and the song concepts are genuinely strong. Production is the problem, and it is a specific kind of problem. The quirks are bizarre enough that they occasionally work, which maybe makes it worse, because it raises the stakes on all the times they do not. Six songs is not much runway, and when nearly every piece feels wildly experimental, there is no center to work from. Experimentation needs an edge to push against.
Favorites: paloma
Least favorite: phone a friend
Songs About Us — Jason Aldean
Tracks/Time: 20 songs, 1 hour 7 minutes | Subgenre: 2, 3, 4
This is Jason Aldean, same as always, with approximately zero differentiation between his music now and his music of ten years ago. He is unchanging, a rock in turbulent times. Whether that’s a compliment depends on what you came for, and by this point you know which camp you’re in. Of the 20 tracks, at least 15 are breakup songs. I guess that’s a data point of sorts.
Favorites: How Far Does a Goodbye Go
Least favorites: Songs About Us (ft. Luke Bryan), Easier Gone (ft. Brittaney Aldean), Country Into Rock and Roll, Fight a Fire