#3717 Dougie Poole - Wideass Highway

2.5/5 old school country ballad feel with a modern streak sounds relevant to my interest. But there's a detuned haze on the whole thing, like the record player sluffed a few rpm, that sets my goddamn teeth on edge

#3459 Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars

3/5 there's no illusion that the protagonists of any of these ballads is Bruce himself, or that the America he's describing exists anymore. The theme is restlessness, so tuck these stories away from here. Ballads that work best when they touch on the universal (Hitch Hikin', title track). His voice is still there, well suited to these low-key ramblers, stuck in place

#3436 Trabants - Nel Cuore Di Una Terra Selvaggia

3/5 more twangy western soundtrack epics please, this is a trend I can get behind. Trabants don't really pull it off though. NCDUT never rises above library music, every song riding a looped trope or two, sounding too long at two minutes, Daddy's Got a Big Gun doubly so

#3404 Steelism - ism

3/5 pleasant but unexciting, slathered in clever steel guitar. Exactly the kind of album you expect veteran studio musicans make: expertly done in every way, without any concept of how to have attitude, personality, or any of the things that make a band, a set, an album

#3381 Waylon Jennings - Lonesome, On'ry and Mean

3.5/5
A solid set of wryly-smiling self-pittiers, with flashes of hot Nashville twang and gospel grandiosity.

Jennings' voice sounds a little put on at times, like he's trying to do Elvis. Weird.

#3372 Chet Atkins - Hometown Guitar

4/5
Atkins is shamelessly showy, but somehow slots cleanly into a dozen tracks across the country gamut. Those instrumentals: Blue Angel -> Get on With It is fuckin fire. And then there's songs with soft cooing vocals as texture; that last one'll take you away.

#3321 William Tyler - Goes West

3.5/5
Pleasant enough virtuosity, but missing that epic patience and ambient buzzes that made Modern Country sound so gloriously infinite. These songs are penned and domesticated and lesser for it

#3187 William Tyler - Live at Third Man Records

Tyler's a heck of a guitar player, and its incredible watching him wring so much out of one instrument and two hands. But it's a more intellectual experience, better suited for close listening; you might miss all the subtle backing and reverb and production touches that gave his records their subliminal emotional force 3.5/5

#3073 Dillard and Clark - Through the Morning, Through the Night

Pleasant enough. Donna Washburn's band-wrecking presence is a sweet touch, and gave us some Burritos besides, so, bonus. Toe-tapping, streaked with blistering bluegrass and wholesome harmonies and I am too sunbathed to complain 3.5/5

#3006 Gram Parsons - Grievous Angel

Absent the rest of the Burrito Brothers, Parsons holds no draw for me. His take on country feels polished and bloodless. Emmylou Harris's reedy voice does nothing for me, but at least this time it sounds like the two are in the same room. A session-musician-sounding whatever 2.5/5

#3005 Richard Betts - Highway Call

Steel guitar's my spirit animal, and nothing this smooth and sweet will ever fall far from my heart. A rambling, swooning piece of stumbledupon heaven, rolling high and low on sweet waves like slowmotion grain in the wind 4/5

#3004 Speedy West - Steel Guitar

An act of pure pedal steel artistry, bordering on showing off, rolling through every sound the beast can make, bending it in every direction there is. Spirited, playful, inventive, effortless; frantic and soothing in turn, consistently good clean fun 4/5

#3003 Buddy Emmons - Steel Guitar Jazz

Does what it says on the tin!

Hard bop going hard, shuffles like country triple time. And the horns and all get their due, democratically. But it's the pedal steel's debut, sounding like it doesn't belong at its own ball, but. . it's hanging. The marriage's never quite comfortable, but its fun to watch em try 3.5/5

#3002 Sneaky Pete Kleinow - Meet Sneaky Pete

This is not the showcase of Pete's (considerable!) talents you're looking for. The backing's pure plastic, the whole sound's breadclip cheap. Clipart country rock, until even the guitar sounds like a cleverly bent synthesizer 2.5/5

#2994 Gram Parsons - GP

Parsons drops his bands, drops the -rock from country-rock, leaving saccharine, paint by numbers country. Every move's been done a thousand times and the duets sound like strangers 2.5/5

#2993 The Flying Burrito Brothers - Burrito Deluxe

Totally solid, laid-back county rock with no particular highlights. An easy way to melt a hot summer half an hour 3.5/5

#2992 John Phillips - John the Wolfking of LA

For someone who hates LA I'm sure a sucker for its gauzy idealizations.

Phillips' lone solo album's a gorgeous, tuneful bit of wistfulness, Lou Reed gone west and smeared across time, memories bathed in honkytonk piano, dusty drums and sweet pedal steel. A beautiful, understatedly sad sunset of a record 4.5/5

#2961 Charles Lloyd & The Marvels and Lucinda Williams - Vanished Gardens

I'm fascinated by country stretched out to road length, drained of all its bullshit backbeats, just the ring of that sweet steel, whether its the Kurt Vile, William Tyler, or the KLF. So here's country jazz proper, full-scale unfolding sax solos with all that drawn down lap and slide. And dang.

Williams does a right fine turn as a jazz singer, keeping enough dust in her drawl, and these two veterans bring the smoky dignity. But its the band that's the key, the interplay of that sunset portamento under frisky cayote runs. The opening mission statement's all you need to know, though the highlight's the twisting, disintegrating wretch that is Unsuffer Me. A gorgeous, natural pairing of traditions here to unwind space and time 4.5/5

#2679 A. Savage - Thawing Dawn

Savage ditches the rest of Parquet Courts, goes small and dusty and simple, still sounds like Pavement. It's intimate though, trading searing and seething for simple vocal lines and a resigned wit that could share a tea with Courtney Barnett, no sentiment without its crook and barb but set before you so plainly - it's disarming. Feels like a balm, somehow 3.5/5

#2607 Moon Mullican - I'll Sail My Ship Alone

Famously a Jerry Lee Louis influencer, Mullican doesn't get enough credit as a rock progenitor, born too early to catch onto a new wave of starmaking. A totally agreeable collection of proto-boogie-woogie, next-gen-ragtime, and general era-bridging. Recommended to rock history nerds more than anyone looking for a good time in 2017, but there's a timeless tune or two in there - good for a poker game of a summer day on the porch 3.5/5