PopMatters' 10 Best Country Albums of 2018

*“Excited for you to sit back and experience *Golden Hour* in a whole new, sonically revolutionized way,” Kacey Musgraves tells Apple Music. “You’re going to hear how I wanted you to hear it in my head. Every layer. Every nuance. Surrounding you.”* Since emerging in 2013 as a slyly progressive lyricist, Kacey Musgraves has slipped radical ideas into traditional arrangements palatable enough for Nashville\'s old guard and prudently changed country music\'s narrative. On *Golden Hour*, she continues to broaden the genre\'s horizons by deftly incorporating unfamiliar sounds—Bee Gees-inspired disco flourish (“High Horse”), pulsating drums, and synth-pop shimmer (“Velvet Elvis”)—into songs that could still shine on country radio. Those details are taken to a whole new level in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. Most endearing, perhaps, is “Oh, What a World,” her free-spirited ode to the magic of humankind that was written in the glow of an acid trip. It’s all so graceful and low-key that even the toughest country purists will find themselves swaying along.

Nowhere on his sixth album does Eric Church directly address either of the two most tumultuous events that occurred during its making, but their presence is felt. Exasperation over the politicized aftermath of the shooting at the Church-headlined Route 91 festival imbues opener “The Snake,” casting the current national divide as intractable and poisonous. Bookending that is slow-burn closer “Drowning Man,” lamenting the dire prospects of an average American worker caught in the middle of that divide. In between, Church\'s life-affirming relief over successful emergency surgery to remove a deadly blood clot can be heard in the joyous survivor\'s boogie of “Hangin\' Around,” the opposites-attract waltz “Heart Like a Wheel,” and the “Sympathy for the Devil”-nudging title track (“Fortune teller told me/\'No more last chances, you got no future at all\'/Oh, but I ain\'t listenin\'”). No one would blame Church if he wanted to use either of these experiences to grandstand a little, but he is canny enough to understand the power of what isn\'t said.

Motivated by the words of a teacher who thought her dreams of making music were too fanciful, Ashley McBryde titled her debut album *Girl Going Nowhere*. Suggesting quite the opposite, the Arkansas singer/songwriter brings a rock edge to classic country, sharing the hard-won wisdom of a decade of singing in bars. Breakthrough track “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega” is a tribute to the uplifting power of music in tough times, but occasionally the assured swagger in her voice gives way to vulnerability and reflection, most stirringly on “Andy,” a tale of enduring love.

A warm, convivial album that ranges from peppy swing (“Don’t Tell Noah”) to sobering ballads (“Something You Get Through”), *Last Man Standing*—like 2017’s *God’s Problem Child*—finds Willie Nelson, a few ticks into his eighties, tackling mortality with grace and wit. He reckons with the fact that he’ll one day go, while laughing—in great, gleeful appreciation—that he hasn’t seen that day yet. “‘Halitosis’ is a word I never could spell,” he cracks on “Bad Breath.” “But bad breath is better than no breath at all.” May we all age so well.

Listing their priorities on breezy road-trip jam “Weed, Whiskey and Willie,” the Nashville-based brothers make it clear they have few troubles. “Don’t take my smoke, my jug of brown liquor or my country music,” they plead, casually. It’s a vibe that surrounds each hazy track on a positively horizontal second album. You’ll hum in time to the billowing choruses of “Shoot Me Straight,” toe-tap to twin guitars on “Tequila Again,” and sway gently to “A Little Bit Trouble.”