Country Reviews
8 Country records in the Certified Archive. Every one of them earned five rainbow thumbs-up, because we only publish reviews of records we think are great — so treat this page as a listening list rather than a ranking. Newest first.
Pokey LaFarge's 'Rent Money' Is a Warm, Hard-Working Masterpiece of '60s Soul
Eleven songs, the first full-length on LaFarge's own Boxer Boy Records, produced by Elliot Bergman at a woodsy Chicagoland studio. After fifteen years of shuffling every deck in American roots music, he's picked one lane — '60s R&B — and floors it.
Angela Autumn's 'Believer' Is a Gloriously Overgrown Masterpiece of Stacked Guitars
Twelve songs from the Nashville songwriter's first full-length since 2021's Frontiers Woman, out on Gar Hole Records. Produced by Isaiah Beard at Club Roar, it runs honky-tonk, psych-rock and clawhammer banjo through the same tape and comes out sounding like one thing.
This Is Lorelei's 'The Singer In My Band' Is a One-Man Back-Porch Miracle
Nate Amos wrote his follow-up to 'Box For Buddy, Box For Star' on tour with no instruments in reach, then went home and played nearly all of it himself. Out September 11th on Matador. Stereogum made it Album of the Week and said it 'instantly sounds like an old favorite.'
Lambchop Turn 1800s Scottish Hymnals Into Nashville Gospel on 'Punching the Clown'
Kurt Wagner's long-running Nashville institution returns after four years with a stripped-back record built around 'lined out singing,' a centuries-old call-and-response tradition — and brings Bon Iver's Justin Vernon along on banjo. Understated, gorgeous, unmistakably Lambchop.
Punch Brothers Go Fully Instrumental and It's a Breathless, Bach-Fueled Triumph
The bluegrass supergroup's seventh album is their first all-instrumental record — no drummer, just mandolin, guitar, bass, banjo, and new member Brittany Haas on fiddle, chasing Bach's moto perpetuo technique at breakneck speed. TheArtsDesk gave it five stars and called it 'breathless.'
Tracey Nelson's 'Hercules' is a Blissfully Melancholic Debut of Country-Rock Perfection
A debut that started life as a CD-R and grew into one of the year's warmest country-rock records. Produced by MJ Lenderman and Colin Miller, with half the Asheville scene pitching in. For the sad guys and gals — Paste's words, and ours.
Hadnot Creek Find the Kingdom at 'The End of the Road'
Self-released outsider folk from Charlottesville with a full band that plays like a front porch full of lifers. Lap steel, fiddle, barroom piano, and songwriting that earns every weathered line. Nobody's covering this record. That's the whole point.
Kevin Morby Writes Kansas City a Love Letter on Little Wide Open
A love letter to his Kansas City heartland, and his most feature-heavy album yet. Morby meditates on time and new beginnings while an ensemble cast lifts every song.