Category: Country
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Courtney Marie Andrews: On My Page
There’s a couple of albums that have stayed on the Review Corner iPod for ages (Keri Noble’s 2004 album Fearless is the longest survivor); at heart country, they are also bluesy ballads sung by women with crystal clear voices. They don’t advance any genres or break new ground. They’re just strong albums of nice…
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Dolly Parton: I Believe In You
Dolly. It’s impossible to say anything bad about her: rose from nothing, written some classic tunes and knows the value of every single one, but not mean either — she gave the rights to I Will Always Love You (the best-selling single by a woman in music history) to her former manager Porter Wagoner, for…
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Neil Young: Hitchhiker
This is a rather magical album: Young rolls up to a studio in 1976, on a night of the full moon, and plays some songs, accompanied only by weed and beer. Some songs go on to be classics, two have not been released before. It’s a got a bit of Clint Eastwood Man With No…
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The Barr Brothers: Queens Of The Breakers
The Review Corner are huge fans of The Barr Brothers (brothers Brad and Andrew, and harpist Sarah Page) and after their last album saw them at a small venue, Page’s massive harp squeezed onto a tiny stage. They’re a class act; slick songs expertly put together but with an appealing DIY / live feel, and…
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Steve Earle and The Dukes: So You Wannabe An Outlaw
Outlaw country had peaked by the time the Review Corner bought Steve Earle’s fantastic debut Guitar Town, but he was in the outlaw vein, both musically (blending rock and blues with country) and with his hell raisin’ lifestyle. With this new album, he reflects on the choices he made, now free from drugs and not…
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Sheryl Crow: Be Myself
After at least one album (the last one, anyway) of commercial country music designed to be played on a car radio on an open American highway, Sheryl Crow has gone back to the acoustic-based country pop-rock of yore. Also designed to be played on a car radio on an open American highway. It’s good, in…
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James House: Berwick Street
We thought House was a young up and coming singer, but it turns out he’s 62 and a veteran, writing both country and western: he co-wrote Grammy-nominated country song of the year Ain’t That Lonely Yet for Dwight Yoakum and A Broken Wing for Martina McBride, as well as Diamond Rio’s number one In a…
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Various: Music from The American Epic Sessions
We thought Old Crow Medicine Show doing Blonde on Blonde live in Nashville was pretty cool but this is even better. The backstory is that it’s a television documentary on the early days of music. In the 1920s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies took to the road to find new…
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Old Crow Medicine Show: 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde
For fans of Bob Dylan, folk, bluegrass or country, this is going to be pretty close to a perfect record. In the sleeve notes, Old Crow’s Ketch Secor says Bob Dylan inspired him to go into music and that Dylan is “the greatest spinner of rhyme and couplet since Shakespeare”. You can take it that…
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Andrew Combs: Canyons Of My Mind
You could call this country — he’s a Texan based in Nashville — but much of the music leans towards the classic ballady pop of the likes of James Taylor, or the folk of Gordon Lightfoot, with “proper” country only cropping up in a couple of tracks. The classic/old-fashioned nature of his approach continues in…
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