Say this for Zach Bryan: when he landed a major-label deal, he decided to go big. Very, very big, as it turns out. American Heartbreak is a whopping 34 songs, amounting to two hours and two minutes of music -- longer than any album this side of the Clash's Sandinista or Prince's Emancipation. Like those two records, American Heartbreak winds up reflecting its era. Sandinista sprawled with over three LPs, Emancipation filled out three CDs, and American Heartbreak simply spills out, an endless playlist that sounds nearly as coherent on shuffle as in its released sequence. That's not a knock on the album so much as a description: it's a clearinghouse for everything the Red Dirt troubadour has completed, whether it's a rollicking rocker like "Whiskey Fever" or a lazily soulful rendition of the Jimmie Davis standard "You Are My Sunshine." Mostly, Bryan explores an earnest, heartfelt middle ground that feels like he's standing alone with an acoustic guitar even when he's fleshed out with other instruments. Often, Bryan feels like an heir to Evan Felker, the singer/songwriter at the core of Turnpike Troubadours, one of the key Red Dirt Americana bands of the 2010s. He writes directly but not plainly; his words are unfussy and melodies unadorned. On an individual basis, the songs are striking. Collectively, American Heartbreak can be a little hard to digest, especially in one sitting: it's a little too much of a good thing, the sounds all bleeding together in an amiable fashion. Parse the songs out into user-constructed playlists, though -- or take it as a series of 20-minute EPs -- and it's hard not to be impressed with the sturdiness of Bryan's music, how he keeps the dusty literary traditions of Red Dirt troubadours alive without affectation.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Younger Now is a bit of a sly nod to a public who watched Miley Cyrus explore a defiantly loud post-adolescence: she may be older, but she's not necessarily grown up. The joke is, Younger Now is most certainly an album that announces Miley's mature phase, a record that shakes off the druggy haze of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz -- an album cut at the height of her infatuation with the Flaming Lips -- yet retains the services of Oren Yoel, a producer/songwriter who collaborated with her on that 2015 digital-only effort. That's the first sign that Younger Now may not be the back-to-the-roots move its retro-iconography and Dolly Parton duet may suggest. Certainly, there are country-ish songs scattered throughout the album -- a hoedown and a waltz, but mostly ballads -- but they're delivered with an arched eyebrow, a distancing effect accentuated by how the album unfurls with a pair of songs where Cyrus brightens up the Californian melancholy of Lana Del Rey. Despite a showstopping performance or two, the kind of pyrotechnics that sound ripped from the heart, sadness isn't Miley's thing. Her specialty is good times, either raving until the early dawn or chilling out on the beach...or maybe whiling away the hours online. Without ever succumbing to the garish neon extremes of Bangerz or the hangover ache of Dead Petz, Younger Now touches upon each of these obsessions and then wraps them in a tidy package. Occasionally, this slick veneer can masquerade the Internet irony of an individual song -- "Week Without You" plays like a Grease parody, the Dolly duet "Rainbowland" suggests a theme park of dancing GIFs -- but the professionalism of both the production and the performance highlights Cyrus' savvy skills. Younger Now reveals she's as comfortable crafting a plaintive country ballad ("Miss You So Much") as effervescent disco ("Thinkin'"), and the fact that these two seemingly disparate styles sit next to each other not altogether comfortably speaks to how Miley Cyrus' aesthetic is thoroughly modern. She may not bother with EDM drops or murmured vocals -- she's justifiably proud of flaunting her voice -- but she perceives no line dividing the past and the present, eagerly dressing up old-fashioned forms in newfangled sounds. If Younger Now seems slightly scattered as it flits from song to song, it nevertheless adds up to a portrait of a pop star so confident of her swagger, she doesn't bother with such niceties as old-fashioned flow. She knows she's got style for miles and miles, enough to keep her afloat when the time comes that she delivers her country tunes with acoustic guitars, not digital instruments, and she has the wisdom to know that snappy sheen is precisely what this particular album needs.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James released the completely self-produced Regions of Light and Sound of God in 2013, a wildly optimistic, even giddy record filled with all manner of song forms, tempos, and production styles. Three years later, he delivers the other side of the coin. Eternally Even couldn’t be more different -- at least musically. It lacks the reckless randomness of its predecessor, and by contrast, it is measured, focused, even subdued in places. James co-produced this set with Blake Mills. Between them, they cover a lot of instruments, but also enlist a fine cast of studio players who include drummers Chris "Daddy" Dave and Brian Reitzell, string master Rob Moose, and vocalist Shungudzo Kuyimba. Drummer Jim Keltner makes a guest appearance, as does New Orleans jazz legend, saxophonist Charlie Gabriel. The music here emerges from spacy psychedelia, jazzy, multi-textured, 21st century soul, and moody nocturnal funk infused with measured indie pop cool. The brooding opener, "Hide in Plain Sight," offers an instrumental intro with a jagged solo guitar and a harmonic, funky bassline. James' lyrics juxtapose the tensions of the times as spiritual optimism meets the grittiness of physical reality. Kuyimba's harmony vocals function as counterweights to James' weary delivery; the drummers maintain a limber groove as spectral synths litter the margins. "Same Old Lie" seemingly follows suit; its lyric, initially, is an indictment of the myths offered by religious leaders and politicians. All three drummers deliver alternate shuffling hip-hop vamps tempered by layers of cinematic strings and synths. But James shifts his words and they become a paean to resistance, a commitment to lived truth. An organ explores Middle Eastern modes as hand drums emerge to cap it. Almost throughout, James offers darkly tinged music using minimal melodies to frame lyrics that refuse to surrender. The emotion in his words -- and his vocals -- almost breaks through on "Here in Spirit." Despite the tune's lithe, shimmering R&B, it has more than a little in common with the Talk Talk of Spirit of Eden. The two-part "We Ain't Getting' Any Younger" offers a long, proggy instrumental intro that gives way to a funky exhortation to "…forget this ever happened/And let a new world start again/Peace ripped into pieces/We gotta put it back together again." "True Nature" offers a respite from the shadows with a swinging Nelson Riddle-esque horn chart, which gives way to spiky, nocturnal funk. "In the Moment" is a dubby, funky pop tune, with Gabriel's multi-tracked saxophones and a trumpet adding earthy jazz to the drifting strings and synths sonic. The title-track closer is an airy, almost pastoral ballad about emerging from lost love without regret or recrimination. Those seeking the wacky thrills of Regions of Light and Sound of God might be surprised -- or even put off at first -- but closer listening reveals the poignant and provocative Eternally Even as a stronger, deeper album. © Thom Jurek /TiVo

Neil Young has never been especially interested in the way the music industry expects artists to operate, preferring to trust his gut rather than fretting about career expectations. It's not hard to imagine Young saying to hell with it and joining a bar band rather than dealing with the annoyances of rock stardom, and he did just that for a while in 1977. That year, he impulsively joined a fledgling band called the Ducks, featuring Bob Mosley of Moby Grape on bass, noted songwriter Jeff Blackburn on guitar, and Johnny Craviotto, who worked with Ry Cooder and Arlo Guthrie, on drums. While Young was the most famous person on board, he was not the leader; all four Ducks took turns singing lead, Mosley and Blackburn wrote most of the songs, and they were content to play bars and clubs in their native Santa Cruz, California, doing two sets a night and charging a three-dollar cover at the door. With someone as famous as Young in the lineup, this could only stay a secret for so long, especially since the Ducks were playing two or three nights a week, and the grand experiment was over in three months, with only a few bootleg tapes to confirm it ever happened. Thankfully, Young obsessively documents his activities, and he had a mobile recording truck tape some Ducks gigs in August 1977. Forty-five years later, he pulled the reels out of his vault and compiled a Ducks album, 2023's High Flyin'. The Ducks were a bar band in the same way NRBQ were a bar band -- their mix of country rock, blues, and tough, straight-ahead rock & roll was rooted in the classics without getting mired in clichés. While they had good, unpretentious fun on-stage, they also had impressive chops and a catalog of fine material, and the energy of seeing a group this good in a funky, intimate setting was not lost on their audiences. Young seems to be having a ball not having to be the star of the show, and his guitar work is excellent, ripping out solos in his unmistakable style but also buzzing along beside Blackburn. He also takes the opportunity to rework some of his classic tunes, with a gutsy tear through "Mr. Soul" a highlight of this set. Mosley and Blackburn's originals are good enough to stand up to comparison to Young's, and Mosley seemingly taught some of the tricks of Moby Grape's glorious harmonies to his fellow Ducks, feeling rougher but no less satisfying. Mosley and Craviotto are a superb rhythm section, too, knowing when to groove and when to push the music into fifth gear. It's a shame the Ducks didn't have the chance to mature and cut a studio album, because they clearly had talent and potential to spare, but there's no shame in being a truly great bar band, and High Flyin' shows the Ducks were something special for just three bucks.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Don Henley doesn't move fast because he can afford not to hurry. He can spend the better part of a decade waiting out a record contract, labor on a 90-minute Eagles reunion for maybe half a decade, then take another eight years before returning with Cass County, his first solo album in 15 years and only fifth overall. That's the mark of a man who takes his time, but all that chronology pales compared to the true journey Cass County represents: a return to Henley's country roots, whether they lie in the blissed-out, mellow sunshine of Southern California or the Texas home that provides this record with its name. According to prerelease scuttlebutt, the album began as a covers project -- on the deluxe edition, there are remnants of this record, including a poignant "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune" and a duet with Dolly Parton on the Louvin Brothers' "When I Stop Dreaming" -- and the album does begin with a version of Tift Merritt's "Bramble Rose" that finds space for both Mick Jagger and Miranda Lambert, a sign of the star firepower on Cass County. Plenty of other guests pop up here, including Merle Haggard and Martina McBride, although there's no doubting Henley is the center of Cass County, but the nice thing about the record is that he's not calling attention to himself, not in the way he did when he loaded up albums with somber six-minute anthems. For the first time in decades -- four, to be precise; One of These Nights was the last time he explicitly dabbled in country-rock -- Henley prefers to paint on a small canvas, abandoning sociological epics for tales of longing and heartbreak. He'll still adopt a cynical sneer -- "No, Thank You" is quintessential spiteful contrarianism, salvaged by a boogie borrowed from "Achy Breaky Heart" -- and the elegiac "Praying for Rain" disguises its environmental activist heart in the form of sun-bleached hippie country, but the shift to expertly constructed miniatures benefits Henley considerably, pushing the focus onto his skill as a craftsman while also suggesting how, in the age of bro-country, this kind of cosmic American music functions as a traditional throwback. This is also where Henley's stubbornness winds up as an asset: he doesn't feel like he's succumbing to either nostalgia or the present; he stoically carries on according to the way things ought to be, and, against all odds, he winds up with a record that's not only easier to enjoy than most of his solo records, but also stronger song for song than many of the early Eagles albums.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The first thing most everybody who hears Dion’s Kickin’ Child is going to say, is that producer Tom Wilson made Dion sound like Bob Dylan. It's fair but inaccurate. If anything, Dion got Wilson -- in late 1964 -- to propose the electric sound to Dylan (who'd worshipped Dion from the '50s) in the first place. Dion convinced the producer to take some of the songwriter's session tapes and give them an electric treatment. He did so with live musicians, then played the results for Bob. In January 1965, Dylan cut the electric side of Bringing It All Back Home. Oddly enough, the title track opener that sounds the most like his Bob-ness wasn't produced by Wilson but by Bob Mersey (who’d helmed the sessions that gave Dion the hit "Ruby Baby"). Backed by the Wanderers (and Al Kooper's organ), Dion cut this set in three sessions between the spring and fall of 1965. What’s here is complete and properly sequenced for the first time. Why? Columbia refused to release the album at the time, prompting Dion to leave the label. They issued some singles, and other tracks appeared on various compilations, but this is complete.This is Dion-the-Bronx-street-song-poet transformed by intuitive musicality and discipline into a refined singer/songwriter. He wrote or co-wrote all but four of these 15 tunes. He seamlessly blends folk and jangly rock guitars (Tom Paxton's "Wondering Where I’m Bound" and "Tomorrow Won’t Bring the Rain"); the blues (the title track); swaggering rock & roll (Dylan's "Baby, I’m in the Mood for You"), and Mort Shuman's "All I Want to Do Is Live My Life"), and pre-psychedelia ("Now," one of a pair co-written with the Wanderers' drummer Carlo Mastrangelo), and recasts it all in his own image. Check "Knowing I Won’t Go Back There" and "You Move Me Babe," where the seasoned doo wop crooner meets folk-rock head on, only to enfold both styles into himself holistically. Dylan's "It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Farewell" will never sound the same given the rippling, soulful beauty in his delivery. Wilson and Dion were made for each other. It’s too bad Columbia didn’t see it that way at the time -- history might have been different. This record would still be gathering dust if it weren't for stubborn rock & roll archivists Miriam Linna and Billy Miller, who doggedly pursued Sony to find the album in the label's vaults so they could release it on their Norton label. Sadly, Miller didn’t live to see it, but his final will and testament is presented here as he intended, with completely remastered sound. Kickin’ Child not only ranks with Dion’s best (standing between career highlights "Runaround Sue" and "Abraham Martin and John"), but it's absolutely one of the greatest folk-rock records ever.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

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