The A.V. Club's Best Country Albums of 2018

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.

After exhilarating dips into guitar rock and country, Carlile returns to her sweet spot: tear-jerking Americana that shows off her crackling croon. It’s her sixth album and her most moving, with vulnerable outsider anthems rooted in healing and hope. There are ballads about addiction (“Sugartooth”), suicide (“Fulton County Jane Doe”), heartbreak (“Every Time I Hear That Song”), and starting over (“Harder to Forgive”), but underneath the hard truths is plenty of optimism. In “The Joke,” a song for kids who don’t fit traditional roles, she offers a light at the end of the tunnel: “I’ve been to the movies/I’ve seen how it ends/And the joke’s on them.”

Carrie Underwood has long been America’s country-pop sweetheart, belting playful revenge anthems and hear-me-roar power ballads. But her sixth album brings a shift in tone: Topical and contemplative, it represents a period of personal change (at 35, she’s a new mom and expecting her second child), and comes at a moment so politically fraught that even traditionally conservative country megastars are daring to ask tough questions. There’s urgency in songs like “The Bullet” and “Love Wins” (detailing the emotional wreckage of shootings and the importance of gay rights, respectively), and courageous reflections on private battles in “Drinking Alone” and “Spinning Bottles.” The title track draws a hard line between vulnerability and weakness. “Falling apart is as human as it gets,” she sings. On any other album, the party songs (“Southbound”) and hip-hop collaborations (“The Champion,” featuring Ludacris) would steal the spotlight, but here they’re simply outshined. Thirteen years after her *American Idol* debut, we’re finally getting to know the woman behind the mic.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Saskatchewan-born singer-songwriter Colter Wall learned the feeling well after spending so much time on the road. “Wherever I wander, wherever I stray/The rustle of the wheat fields starts calling my name,” he sings on “Plain to See Plainsman,” his rich baritone echoing the song’s strolling bassline. His sophomore album spins that homesickness into tribute. Produced by Nashville’s Dave Cobb, and featuring harmonica from Willie Nelson’s longtime collaborator Mickey Raphael and pedal steel guitar from Lloyd Green, *Songs of the Plains* situates the Canadian troubadour alongside Southern brethren like Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, and Chris Stapleton. As Wall tells it, Western isn’t a direction so much as a state of mind.

2016’s radiant *Honest Life* was a breakthrough for Courtney Marie Andrews. Here, the Arizona singer/songwriter’s pockmarked country finds broader, more reflective inspiration. There’s a hymn-like solidity to the album’s 10 songs, all telling stories of struggling people, as Andrews describes, “chasing that bigger life.” But she isn’t just in the business of chronicling sadness. The delicate piano on “Rough Around the Edges” belies its message of rugged self-acceptance, while the hearty “Kindness of Strangers” lets the sun pour through.

After breaking through with a batch of restless, itinerant songs on Honest Life in 2016, Courtney Marie Andrews longs for something more permanent on the follow-up. The Seattle singer spends much of May Your Kindness Remain exploring ideas of home and what it means to have roots, on 10 new tunes that are lusher and more expansive while leaving plenty of room to showcase her astonishing voice. Andrews and her band recorded May Your Kindness Remain with producer Mark Howard, whose voluminous credits include albums by Lucinda Williams, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris. Howard’s understated aesthetic suits Andrews, who pushes herself toward bolder musical arrangements and a fuller, more soulful sound than the traveling-woman-with-guitar feel of Honest Life.- Eric R. Danton of Paste Magazine

*“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.