First Listen: Chris Young, Joshua Ray Walker and the Albums You Need to Hear This Week

Autumn has always felt like the perfect time to nestle in under a blanket, brew a hot cup of English tea and settle into some new records.

As there's no time like the present, we recommend you do so with the three records we're exploring this week. There's formula country pop from Chris Young, an all-encompassing and excavating collection from Joshua Ray Walker and an album of the year contender from Jillian Jacqueline.

Honorable mention this week goes to Leon Majcen's new album - make sure you give Making A Livin' (Not A Killin') a spin.

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

When Chris Young announced late last year that he was leaving his longtime home at RCA Nashville for Black River Entertainment, the move sparked a buzz of renewed possibility for the nearly 20-year country veteran. With fourteen No. 1 singles to his name, many hoped that the creative energy surrounding labelmate Kelsea Ballerini might inspire Young’s next chapter. But, as his tenth studio album’s title suggests, I Didn’t Come Here to Leave finds Young sticking close to familiar habits.

Aside from 2021’s Famous Friends, which added a welcome collaborative spark, much of Chris Young’s catalog blurs together. Tracks from A.M. could slip easily into Losing Sleep—and vice versa—without much notice. That’s not to say these records were lackluster, but rather that they followed a reliable formula built more for chart traction than artistic evolution. The approach has worked largely thanks to Young’s smoldering baritone, made for the airwaves, and his hit-or-miss knack for crafting contemporary country earworms.

With I Didn’t Come Here to Leave, however, the limits of Young’s tried-and-true formula become harder to ignore. Aside from his gorgeously delivered vocals, ‘Some Around Here’ aims to be a good-ole-boy, down-home anthem that should sizzle but instead barely flickers under the weight of clichés and overproduced reverb.

Likewise, ‘Pour Some Whiskey On It’ feels more like a leftover from Jason Aldean’s cutting-room floor than a fit for Young’s more wholesome image—even if his rugged growl nearly convinces you otherwise. The toughest listen, though, is ‘Jesus, Momma, Country Radio,’ which plays like a concept cooked up by an AI algorithm rather than born from genuine inspiration.

While the schmaltzy, faux-flower sentiment of ‘Til the Last One Dies’ is being positioned as the album’s chart-ready single, the real standout is the title track, which finally showcases Young’s strengths. His honey-coated, full-toned voice glides over a hypnotic midtempo groove as he recounts a mostly innocent night out at his favorite watering hole. It’s quintessential contemporary country—easy on the ears, anchored by a memorable hook, and a reminder of why Young’s vocals remain among the genre’s most reliable.

Young remains a respected figure in country music, and I Didn’t Come Here to Leave won’t change that. Still, the album serves as a reminder of what can happen when an artist stays comfortable instead of pushing forward—raising questions about how much longer his voice and longevity will continue to command attention.

Rating: 4/10

For some people, going to a garage sale or an antiques store isn’t just a place full of “stuff”, but instead a place full of stories. Joshua Ray Walker is one of those sensitive souls that can’t quite separate the story from the object. Work that into a concept album, run with it as far as you can, and you’ve got an eclectic piece of work that, if nothing else, is original.

After Tropicana transported us to a beachy-country escape this year, Stuff takes an entirely different route, carefully curating a collection of ordinary, everyday objects and choosing a different musical language to express the internal monologue of each. Whilst some work better than others, there’s a sonic landscape to each that fits each of Walker's characters, ‘Barbie’ is set against an upbeat poppy electro beat, one that could’ve been playing through every stereo in Barbie’s dream house back in the 90s.

The album definitely does run the risk of feeling cliche, or trivial, the vocal distortion of ‘Bowling Ball’ feeling too predictable, the combination of Italian opera and Appalachian calls on ‘Radio’ being a strange mix of too many channels. However, there are some moments on Stuff that discover the exact sentiment Walker was hoping to find. ‘Brick’ stands out from the rest of the album by miles, a Western Stars era Springsteen-esque feel running through the track that entirely captures the sentiment of strength in simplicity.

It’s on tracks like ‘Shears’ that Walker’s intentions become clearest, “cutting ties and biding time, I pine for you to hold me tight,” he laments as the voice he gives to some neglected garden shears could’ve come from a number of our favourite contemporary “sad boys with guitars”. Along with ‘Telephone’, what Walker is doing clicks. Position the distinctly human longing for connection and communication from the position of the old 90s landline, and we realise what we might be missing.

‘Home’ ends the album and closes the cataloguing of garage sale monologues, a classic country track that reminds us that whilst we’ve been taken in every direction across ‘Stuff’, Walker can still write a country song. Maybe all of these chapters exist within the storybook of country music’s melancholic sentiments.

It’s sometimes a little too obvious, a little too forced, but at the same time, no one else is finding the value in life through the eyes of inanimate objects, so who’s to say how it should be done?

When life becomes unsteady, the possibility of a future being brought into question, finding voices anywhere and everywhere is quite the blessing.

Rating: 6.5 /10

On MotherDaughterSisterWife, Jillian Jacqueline doesn’t just write songs, she defines lifetimes.

The singer-songwriter’s new album feels like a quiet reckoning, born from the threshold between womanhood and motherhood. Written while becoming a mother herself, Jacqueline traces the intricate web of patterns, stories, and scars that define family and identity. The result is a deeply personal yet universal collection - one that asks what it really means to grow, to forgive, and to still feel like a girl in a woman’s body.

Sonically, the body of work rests in the liminal space between folk, indie, and country; a sound as haunting as it is grounding. There are hints of Phoebe Bridgers’ melancholy and Ethel Cain’s cinematic sprawl, balanced by moments of pure, belty catharsis reminiscent of Chappell Roan. Jacqueline’s voice moves like wind through tall grass: soft and weightless one moment, raw and unflinching the next.

'China Shop' lands hardest, like a gut punch that explores fragility in love and the wreckage left behind by men who toss feelings carelessly. 'Eyelashes' feels like a soft breeze - tender, reflective, and impossibly human. And then there’s 'Cherry Blossom,' a standout for its shimmering vulnerability and quiet resilience, a song that captures the ache and renewal of womanhood in bloom as the introduction to the album. 'Gravity', meanwhile, closes out the record leaving you feeling the weight of her words.

Produced with a delicate touch that lets silence breathe as much as sound, MotherDaughterSisterWife thrives in its restraint. It’s a meditation on transformation; a record that looks both backward and forward, honoring the generations that came before while redefining what it means to nurture, to create, and to simply exist.

Jillian Jacqueline has crafted not just an album, but a mirror; one that reflects every version of womanhood, in all its chaos and beauty.

Rating: 9/10

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For more on this week's artists, see below: