After another stellar New Music Friday, we're delving into a trio of projects from three completely different areas of the country spectrum. With releases from country-rocker Ashley McBryde, traditional up-and-comer Coleman Jennings and alt-folk trailblazer Josiah and the Bonnevilles, this week's album round-up is refreshingly eclectic.

The Holler crew have been listening hard and breaking down the latest releases from across country music’s top tier, helping you decide what’s worth spinning and what might be better left in the queue.

After spending time with this week’s biggest new albums, the Holler staff have their say:

Ashley McBryde’s fifth studio album offers a first full insight into her story. With its bold opener packed with big riffs and aggressive drums to the goosebump-inducing ballads to the rueful final song, McBryde lays her soul bare with a level of strength and depth that many fear to share.

McBryde has curated her sound with a deft touch, blending her Arkansas roots of delta blues and classic country with the idiosyncrasies of her modern country-rock edge.

With her big-band-backed first track, ‘Rattlesnake Preacher’, McBryde sets the tone and intention of the album. It's unapologetically, unashamedly Ashley McBryde. Having come up against resistance when trying to record that song in the past, McBryde, with her tenacity and self-belief, ensured it was on this album. And it does not disappoint.

From the gritty, hard-hitting ‘What If We Don't', to the beautifully poignant ‘Hand Me Downs’, McBryde has poured her heart and soul into this project. With some hard truths and difficult chapters to explore, McBryde is spotlighting the real her. It’s all the words she needs to purge to set herself free from the weight of the past versions of her, and lines like “neither of us got this empty on our own” from ‘Bottle Tells Me So’ gut-punch you so hard, you’re forced to feel it.

‘Behind Bars’ is a standout track. The double-entendre references McBryde's experience with alcoholism, with the song's protagonist unable to resist the temptation of another round to the extent that she may as well have been behind bars. The exceptional writing from Jeff Hyde, Jessi Alexander and Jon Randall cleverly explore this period of McBryde’s story without it feeling rueful or angry. It’s not a song of regret, but of empowerment. It’s the fuel for the resilience she wears with pride now.

Closing the album out, ‘Ten To Midnight’ has an upbeat finality to it. With the visuals that run parallel with this album, McBryde is trying to reason with another version of herself that falls on deaf ears. But the song feels like it’s not for her, and more for anyone who sees themselves in the stories McBryde has shared.

As she quite literally closes the door at the end of the album, we feel lighter, like we know the authentic McBryde. It’s an exhale as she steps into this powerful and truthful version of her. The strength, honesty, and vulnerability captured in this project is unbeatable, and is already generating a blanket of warmth and understanding from her fans.

8.8 / 10

~ Georgette Brookes

It’s enchanting, strange, soulful, a bit wild and instrumentally genius. It It edges towards forming a new genre - like folk & rock ’n’ roll colliding with country to form a Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Carl Perkins supergroup. Amongst all that, it still feels entirely original.

It's like it was recorded thirty years ago in Hillbilly Central, but somehow landed in 2026. It does not sound like an artist trying to recreate the past. It sounds like someone who understands it, absorbs it, and then turns it into something contemporary and unique. The sort of artist who sticks to his truth. Nothing here feels forced or polished into something it is not.

The opening run of ‘Ride On’, ‘Head Spinning’, ‘Jamie’, and ‘Flyin’ feels less like the start of an album and more like the arrival of a new language. The songs blur folk, country, psychedelia, and something harder to pin down into a sound that feels completely its own. There’s a restless, searching quality running through them — music that makes you question everything around you while somehow pulling you closer to the things that actually matter.

In the album’s middle stretch, the pace softens and the writing leans more stripped-back and folky, closer to Dylan than Willie Nelson. The mood becomes more inward and reflective, though it occasionally loses some of the spark and urgency that makes the opening so electrifying. A few songs drift into abstraction, and at times the vocals feel buried inside the atmosphere rather than driving the songs forward.

The record finds its footing again with ‘Good While It Lasted’, which restores a sense of momentum and emotional clarity. By the time ‘I Will Lead You Home’ arrives, the album feels almost spiritual. The song carries the weight of a hymn — intimate, reverent, and deeply human. There are traces of gospel-era Elvis in the vocal delivery, but it never feels performative or derivative; instead, it sounds like an artist reaching for something timeless in his own voice.

It is hard to create something truly original when so much has already come before. But I can safely say I have not heard anything quite like this. It will make you celebrate life and want to change every inch of it, all in the space of ten songs.

8.1 / 10

~ Laura Halse

Nestled in the coastal town of Wilmington, North Carolina, down an old country road, sits Whiskey Trail Pub & Grill. It is the kind of community dive that welcomes diehard locals far more than passing tourists. On any given night, a passerby might find worn picnic tables filled with familiar faces, smoking, drinking, and most of all, connecting. It is the kind of place that becomes a habit, a second home for those who walk through its doors.

Here, connections are made, laughter ignites, and many find their own sense of family. It is a space where the hardships of life and love are both comforted and celebrated with grit, tenacity, and heart. Everyone brings themselves fully, and everyone is accepted as is.

With As Is, Josiah and the Bonnevilles creates a similarly off-the-beaten-path space, one where his stories unfold not in quiet isolation but in a distinctly communal Carolina state of mind. Guided by the steady hand of Josiah Leming, the album’s lyrical structures and rustic production feel intimate and atmospheric, inviting the listener in as if seated across from him at a weathered picnic table, salt air hanging thick, as he works through love lost and questions of identity.

The plaintive ruminations of ‘Good Boy’ set a gut-punching tone, using the comfort of the mundane as a conversational entry point into deeper pain. “I ain’t wrote a word in a month or so / ’Cause my hands, they hurt from a pen so cold,” Leming cries out, openly mourning the loss of the familiar while searching for firmer footing in a new direction. The playful sting of “Come on baby, before you rip me apart / Could you find a little lovin’ in your Carolina heart?” lands with a wallop on the masterful, midtempo ‘Carolina Heart.’ Through a reluctant celebration of the Tar Heel State, he tries to resist the pull of love’s gravity, though his fate feels sealed from the start. That acceptance carries into the rootsy rock of ‘Going Gone,’ where he leans fully into the unraveling, drifting deeper into the slow, consuming weight of heartbreak.

On the stripped-back ‘One Day at a Time,’ Leming offers hard-fought closure, reluctantly admitting, “I’m learning not to hate myself / one day at a time / It ain’t like you didn’t love me well / it ain’t like you didn’t try.” Here, he turns inward, delivering a softer vocal performance that carries the emotional weight of a late-night call to a familiar number, long after the neon lights are off and the stools are stacked. It is the quiet intention of the spoken-word title track that ultimately cements the emotional triumph of this indelible collection. As Leming traces the cracks and crevices of a life marked by wear and tear, he reveals the imperfect beauty that defines us all.

Though he collaborated with some of this generation’s most compelling creatives, naming them here would only distract from the singular focus at the heart of the record. This is Leming’s story, told on his own terms, yet it resonates with us all. As Is is, quite simply, his masterwork, and an early contender for album of the year.

9.2 / 10

~ Soda Canter

For more weekly release round-ups, see below: