As ripples continue to be sent across the country music waters courtesy of Ella Langley's latest album, Dandelion, this week's New Music Friday sees a dazzling array of stars dropping, including Kacey Musgraves, Riley Green and Ashley McBryde.

There's a couple of covers - one that delivers, and one that falls a little flat - along with two eagerly anticipated albums that we've been diving into, and a whole lot more.

The Holler crew have been listening hard and analysing the latest batch of releases from country's top-tier, to help you determine what to hit play on and what to skip this week.

After listening to all of this week's new releases, the Holler staff have their say:

‘Middle of Nowhere’ feels like reading your old diary entries, but in an entirely different place to where they were written. Sonically sitting somewhere between the serenity of Golden Hour and the rhythmic experimentation of star-crossed, the track introduces Musgraves’ upcoming album as a return to her roots but with all she’s learned so far.

At times, the lilting melody feels reminiscent of the Sinatra classic, ‘Somethin’ Stupid’. Whether that was intentional or not, it plays as a nod to Musgraves’ decision of escaping to the nothingness, somewhere other people’s musings, mistakes or misleadings can’t reach you - even the well-intentioned, grand-gesture coded ones.

It's a contemplative, restorative and healing track, lingering with the notions of finding peace in your own company. As a single, though, it lacks memorability and feels like a somewhat uncomfortable listening experience with its disjointed rhythm changes. When placed within the narrative of the full album, ‘Middle of Nowhere’ is more likely to hit a bit harder - as a standalone, it won’t be on repeat.

6.8 / 10

~ DI

As McBryde gears up for the release of her sixth studio album, Wild, she bestows upon us her final single, ‘Lines In The Carpet’.

The punchy, upbeat track reflects the vigour with which McBryde’s lead character is using her Dyson to make lines in the carpet. It mimics the frustration and anger one might expect in such a relationship, creating a crowd-pleasing melody. The chorus is catchy, the lyrics are purposeful and McBryde’s powerful vocals stand strong throughout. It’s a perfectly palatable, radio-ready track, which feels slightly off-brand for McBryde.

It’s not as aggressive as ‘Rattlesnake Preacher’ or as pensive as ‘Bottle Tells Me So’, but it does offer some signature McBryde guitar licks and a turn-it-up beat. It’s potentially the weakest single from the Wild project so far - but something had to be, right?

Perhaps that’s what happens when you bare your soul in an album - anything less vulnerable doesn’t hit as hard. McBryde has spoiled us with such intimacy in her songs that this one feels ever so slightly lacklustre.

6.7 / 10

~ Georgette Brookes

Long before modern country stars blurred the line between charm and provocation, Conway Twitty understood the power of suggestion. Across a run of hits in the 1970s and 1980s, Twitty leaned confidently into his sexuality, using velvet phrasing, slow-burning delivery, and just enough wink to make hearts race without ever crossing the line. Songs like ‘I'd Love to Lay You Down’ and ‘Slow Hand’ turned desire into an art form, proving that country music has long had room for swagger and seduction alike. With lines like, “Dance a little by the fireplace / We’d make our love, then we’d just lay / If I had it my way,” it is hard not to suspect that on new single ‘My Way,’ Riley Green knows exactly how to make use of his, ahem, many talents. The longing stare is intentional, the charm well-practiced, and the result is a smoldering reminder that Conway Twitty’s long-lusted approach is alive and well.

Yet this should not diminish Riley Green’s adept songwriting, assisted here by Colton Seale. ‘My Way’ is quintessential Green, pairing descriptive storytelling with the unfiltered reflections on love lost that have become his bread and butter. Alongside hits like ‘Worst Way’ and ‘Don't Mind If I Do,’ his latest only adds further weight to his standing as a fixture in the genre. This time, though, he seems even more acutely aware, and making rightful use, of the full package.

7.5 / 10

~ Soda Canter

With this left-field Harry Styles cover, Zach John King had a great opportunity to add some country flair to a pop classic, and has unfortunately ended up releasing something reminiscent of Tucker Wetmore on karaoke. No offence, Tuck.

Remember when Kacey Musgraves released Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’? Of course you do, it was stunning. Will anyone remember King’s version of ‘As It Was’? Unlikely.

And that’s not because it’s bad. Just to be clear - it’s fine. It’s just, well, it’s exactly like the original. It’s not a cover, but more of a copy and paste. The self-professed ‘Wannabe Cowboy’ could have spiced this up with a fiddle, added in a banjo and definitely tickled it with a bit more steel, creating his own country version of the pop hit.

Instead, King has leant into the success of the original track and imitated the melody so well that it’s kind of hard to tell that it is a cover, losing his gritty voice and hardy personality that usually shines through. It’s disappointing and a bit boring.

4.0 / 10

~ Georgette Brookes

Kylie Frey’s ‘One Night in Tulsa’ first arrived in 2019 as a stirring, emotionally bruised gem that showcased the Louisiana native’s gift for classic country songwriting. Built on regret, temptation, and the kind of reflective longing country music has always treasured, the song felt both timeless and refreshingly modern in Frey’s hands, the sort of composition that seemed destined to travel far beyond its original release.

Eight years later, Reba McEntire’s cover arrives as the title-track of an extended play, intended to launch a series of thematically curated monthly capsules celebrating different chapters of her career. Beginning with a tribute to her home-state feels like a fittingly triumphant place to start. Her performance here is yet another reminder that when the spectacle surrounding one of country music’s longest-standing and brightest stars is quieted, the renowned storyteller steps back into focus. McEntire understands the nuance of interpreting a lyric, never forcing the narrative but allowing her voice to color the emotion in every syllable.

By staying close to the production spirit of the original, McEntire only deepens the power of the song itself. Another unsurprising clean run from our rodeo queen, and a well-deserved spotlight on Frey’s sublime artistry.

8.6 / 10

~ Soda Canter

Vincent Neil Emerson has scraped and worked to pull pieces of his musical past to create a deeply contemporary album with Blue Stars. Written from a position of observation, he’s produced a portrait of an artist rooted in honesty and understanding of his surroundings. By taking his touring band into the studio with him, there’s no other way to describe the album but electrically alive - Blue Stars has an inherently current, messy, unfiltered life wired into it. In a musical world of trend-chasing, shallowness and unlived stories, he’s doing the work of the greats - capturing and recognising the shared human experience.

‘Rich Man’ plays against an unabashedly bold drumbeat, with bells pulling in Choctaw Powwow threads and fiddle paying tribute to the American folk songs the country genre is built on. Weaving in and spitting out truths like “the welfare system’s flawed” and “when it comes your time to go / You can’t pull wealth out the earth”, Emerson is making anti-capitalist noise for the masses whilst remaining skillfully introspective.

‘Dark Horse’ spins as a twangy celebration of a mother who fought against all the odds, respect paid back in Emerson’s artistic determination. On ‘Angeline’, the comparisons to Texan songwriting heroes like Guy Clarke are undeniably evident and leave Emerson sitting on the same pedestal as legends. It’s a start-to-finish acoustic love story, capturing the inevitable pain, longing and shattering devastation of losing the person you’ve lived everyday pleasures with.

Whilst Emerson grounds his opinions in personal stories and experiences, Blue Stars goes miles beyond a diary-like collection, instead creating an intensely human record that could not have been made at any other time than right now. It’s Texas country, it’s pure American folk, it’s Indigenous oral storytelling, it’s rock-n-roll and for good measure, ‘Louisiana Wind’ flaunts what real musicians with real instruments can do. Emerson has reached in every sonic direction he’s ventured into before, and written it all down with his own pen to create the most authentically free-spoken release of the year so far.

Hell, every moment in life is worth experiencing when the soundtrack is this good.

9 / 10

~ DI

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road offered one of modern literature’s starkest meditations on what survival truly costs. Though often remembered as a post-apocalyptic story of a father and son, McCarthy’s prose drilled unflinchingly into the moral weight of every choice required to stay alive, asking how much mercy a person can preserve when the world demands brutality. It is a novel as concerned with grace as it is with hunger, and with a father slowly reckoning with who he has become in order to protect what remains of goodness. That same tension between conscience and survival hangs over Benjamin Tod’s latest album Vengeance and Grace.

Vengeance and Grace is built on the kind of narrative that has always made Tod compelling: mercy beside fury, ruin beside redemption, punishment brushing shoulders with reward. Tod calls the title the duality of his lifetime, and these songs carry that weathered truth in every line. Here, old ghosts still rattle, but they do so in the presence of hard-earned wisdom. The result is a record that feels bruised, clear-eyed, and resoundingly alive.

The classic bluegrass intonations guide the somber yet faintly joyful understanding of the title-track, which movingly explores the fall and rise of the human spirit. When Tod sings, “I learned the hard way,” every ounce of lived experience behind the line is fully felt. The sweeping Western influences of ‘Martyr of a Man’ match the gallop of Benjamin Tod’s malleable drawl as he laments a restless search for glory on the road. “Water’s quiet, whiskey screams, it’s a bad time for living clean,” he sings on the redemptive ‘The Bottle's Gone,’ to emotionally stirring results as he considers life on the other side of addiction. Yet it is on the almost celebratory ‘I Ain't Bound’ where Tod feels most present. In sorting through the chains of the past, he sounds unshackled at last, with his eyes attempting to focus on the possibilities of the future.

Vengeance and Grace is an expertly focused record full of old scars, hard truths, and the complicated grace that follows both. In sorting through vengeance, mercy, and the cost of survival, Tod arrives at something quietly profound and soulfully necessary. As Cormac McCarthy once wrote in The Road, “You have to carry the fire.” A quest that Tod knows all too well.

8.6 / 10

~ Soda Canter

For more on Kacey Musgraves, see below: