It’s a brat summer and all, but that’s not the only prevailing music trend of 2024. Country music has been popping up in more places than ever lately; some of this year’s best indie albums are heavily country-leaning (like Waxahatchee and Hurray for the Riff Raff), and some of the biggest pop stars in the world have either already released country albums this year (Beyoncé) or plan to do so soon (Lana Del Rey, Post Malone), not to mention the Beyoncé album helped shine a line on country-rapper Shaboozey, who currently has the #1 song in America with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” from his new album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going. On top of all that, there have been several great albums this year from all throughout the country world, and we’ve picked six to highlight that we can’t stop listening to.
Read on for the list, in no particular order, and find more of our favorite albums of 2024 so far here.
Zach Bryan – The Great American Bar Scene
Warner
Steven Hyden recently suggested that the music that’s stood out the most recently has come from artists whose popularity was a surprise. Zach Bryan’s popularity isn’t exactly news at this point, but his steady rise to stardom continues to pleasantly baffle me; there’s really no one else like him in popular music right now. He’s the Ticketmaster-hating, Bon Iver and Joyce Manor-loving country singer who’s ascended to arena headliner status without following any of the rules of mainstream country music. He makes modest, plain-sounding albums that sound more like indie rock or mid ’70s Neil Young than current pop Nashville, and he’s just as likely to tour and collaborate with living legends like Bruce Springsteen as he is with more cultishly-loved acts like Jason Isbell, Turnpike Troubadours, Sierra Ferrell, The Middle East, and the aforementioned Bon Iver. He quickly made it to the top and he’s using his platform to show the world that there’s so much more out there than the 1% that dominates such a large majority of popular music.
Springsteen and John Mayer both appear on Zach’s new album The Great American Bar Scene, as do up-and-coming singer/songwriter Noeline Hoffman and another of those more cultshly-loved artists, John Moreland (whose recently-released Visitor is not to miss if you’re a Zach Bryan fan). Zach’s never been one for brevity, and this album offers up 19 songs that clock in at an hour and three minutes. Remarkably, it never drags once, and maybe it’s just because it came out on a day when almost no other music was released (July 4th), but I played it three times in a row the first time I heard it and still instantly wanted more. It’s one of Zach’s best albums yet, with everything we’ve come to expect from him: storytelling that stops you in your tracks, melodies you can’t get out of your head, and arrangements that range from bare-bones acoustic guitars to Crazy Horse-style rock freakouts. The song with Springsteen has echoes of “I’m On Fire” and the song “28” sounds more than a little influenced by the aforementioned Jason Isbell, and Zach knows how to tip his hat to his musical heroes without ever coming off like pale imitation. He’s the next generation’s musical hero in the making, especially if he keeps making great albums like this one.
Johnny Blue Skies (aka Sturgill Simpson) – Passage Du Desir
High Top Mountain
Sturgill Simpson has long talked about a plan for a five-album career, and he reached LP5 with 2021’s The Ballad of Dood & Juanita (not counting the two Cuttin’ Grass albums that were made up of bluegrass versions of his own songs). Leading up to that album, he said, “I don’t want to say I’ll never make another record, but this five-album narrative was really clear when I moved to Nashville. […] But then after that, I am not sure. I love the studio. I like sleeping in my bed.” At some point, he found himself back in the studio, but it looks like he’s sticking to capping the “Sturgill Simpson” catalog at five albums, because this new LP comes out under a new name, Johnny Blue Skies. You can view it as a fresh start, but it also just sounds like a pretty natural progression for Sturgill, who’s always evolved from one album to the next.
Sturgill’s hopped around a bit stylistically over the years, and this one finds him embracing the country, blues, soul, and Southern rock of the late ’60s/early ’70s, with songs that scratch the same itch as stuff like the Allman Brothers, The Band, and Gram Parsons. It’s music that’s right in Sturgill’s comfort zone, and after leading a solo career for over a decade, he sounds as much like a seasoned veteran as his forebears did by the end of the ’70s. It’s a tight, eight-song album that’s built to fit on a vinyl LP–the kind they made back then–and each side ends with its own mini epic. Side A culminates in “Jupiter’s Faerie,” an emotional string-laden ballad that clocks in at seven and a half minutes, and Side B says farewell with “One for the Road,” an extended Allmans-worthy jam that fades out as the nine-minute mark approaches. That last one especially is a well-deserved grand finale after an album of more concise nuggets like the soulful “If The Sun Never Rises Again” and “Scooter Blues,” the countrified twang of “Swamp of Sadness” and “Who I Am,” the blues licks of “Mint Tea,” and sonic outlier “Right Kind of Dream,” an orchestral heartland rock song that kinda sounds like Springsteen by way of Arcade Fire. Like so many of the best eight-song albums, every song brings something unique to the table, there’s no room for filler, and there’s constant momentum.
Sierra Ferrell – Trail of Flowers
Rounder
Sierra Ferrell’s last album, Long Time Coming (2021) felt transported into present-day from the pre-rock & roll era, with a take on traditional bluegrass and early jazz so convincingly retro that it could pass as a lost relic from nearly a century ago if not for the recording quality. But for its followup Trail of Flowers, Sierra is clearly setting things in a more modern environment, down to the album artwork and the accompanying photography. “I wanted to make a fuller sound with bigger drums, but still stay true to the stripped-down feel of old-time music whenever it felt right,” she says. “I wanted to create something that makes people feel nostalgic for the past, but excited about the future of music.”
With the 12 songs that make up Trail of Flowers, that’s exactly what she does. There are still retro moments, like the Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith-penned bluegrass standard “Chittlin’ Cookin’ Time in Cheatham County” and various elements of Sierra’s own songwriting and arrangements, but Trail of Flowers largely feels timeless. Her lyrics are filled with widely relatable themes–love, heartbreak, the American Dream–and she rarely if ever relies on clichés. Her melodies are satisfying, and her stylistic choices pull from country, folk, bluegrass, and rock in a way that would fit as well next to Emmylou Harris in the mid ’70s as it will opening for both Zach Bryan and Mitski this summer. Trail of Flowers has that perfect, enduring mix of a warm, modest, organic exterior, and songwriting that really pops.
Adeem the Artist – Anniversary
Four Quarters Records/Thirty Tigers
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that country music prides itself on a sense of traditionalism that too often gets a little too conservative, so it’s refreshing to come across someone like Adeem the Artist. Adeem clearly has a lot of love for country’s musical traditions, but there’s nothing conservative about them. Their last album tackled white supremacy from the point of view of a white artist forced to reckon with their own internalized racism, and the album before that was called Cast-Iron Pansexual. On Anniversary, Adeem sings love songs that use both male and female pronouns, including one about a partner with borderline personality disorder. And you don’t need a lyric sheet to notice that Adeem is writing deeply vulnerable music. They’re also writing very tuneful songs that even a casual country listener would appreciate, and they’re “alt” enough that it made perfect sense when they toured with The Mountain Goats last year. Adeem has said that “Queer Country as a genre has meant a lot to me,” and with the hot streak they’ve been on with these last few LPs, it feels like no exaggeration to say we’re witnessing a queer country icon in the making.
John Moreland – Visitor
Thirty Tigers
Having taken his country/folk rock in an increasingly electronic direction on 2020’s LP5 and 2022’s Birds in the Ceiling, John Moreland has unplugged once again. The surprise-released Visitor was largely self-recorded at John’s home with just a few other musicians, is fueled primarily by acoustic guitar, John’s grippingly somber voice, and the occasional light drumming. His songwriting–which stylistically occupies the middle ground between Jason Isbell and David Bazan–is at its most impactful, with songs that are fueled by the hellscape we live in sung in a way that comes off personal and vulnerable. John’s delivery is mellow but devastating, with melodies that wrap around you like a warm blanket and one-liners that stop you dead in your tracks.
Willi Carlisle – Critterland
Signature Sounds
The album artwork and title of Willi Carlisle’s third album Critterland and lyrical references to sparrows and opossums in the opening title track suggest that the Fayetteville, Arkansas singer/songwriter has a whimsical side, but don’t let that fool you into thinking Critterland is anything other than an album of deep devastation. In the third verse of that opening song, he sings of being labeled “a queer and a communist,” and throughout the rest of the album, he goes on to explore death, depression, disaster, addiction, generational trauma, and other tough topics before reaching the pin-drop climax of penultimate track “When the Pills Wear Off,” a heart-wrenching tale of losing a loved one to an overdose. He delivers all of his stories with an appealing high-pitched warble, and he sets his songs to a backdrop of acoustic guitars, banjo, and harmonica that echoes the no-frills rawness of legends like John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, and Bob Dylan. The melodies and simplistic arrangements are great, and like all of those aforementioned artists, it’s Willi’s knack for gripping storytelling that puts his music over the edge. Never is that more true than on the closing track, “The Money Grows On Trees,” a seven-minute journey through Appalachian Gothic spoken word that’s just as intense and powerful as the nine hummable tunes that precede it.
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Browse our country archives for more country, and see our other favorite albums of 2024 so far here.