Country music

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews new albums by Webb Wilder and the quintet Billy Hill. Webb Wilder's "Hybrid Vigor" is an outsider's eccentric blend of rock and roll livened up with country, blues and rockabilly. Billy Hill has produced an album with a different type of eccentricity --they're Nashville insiders whose oddball act gives an edge to their country music.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews "Too Long in the Wasteland," the debut album of singer and songwriter James McMurtry. Like his father, the novelist Larry McMurtry, James McMurtry writes of the drifters and loners of the high plains.

Rock critic Ken Tucker says the group's first collaboration with country artists, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, breathed new life into their music. The second volume of that effort is less focused, with a strange and haphazard assortment of collaborators.

Rock critic Ken Tucker says that, with the rise of bad boys and neo-traditionalists in country music, fans and critics have overlooked several accomplished women artists. He reviews new albums by four singers worth checking out.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new country star's latest album, which flirts with jazzy blues with surprising success.

Rock critic Ken Tucker once more looks at the best and worst songs currently hitting the airwaves. Represented artists include Matthew Sweet, Bunny Wailer, Violent Femmes, Tone Loc, and Emmylou Harris.

Country musician Buck Owens is back and as corny as ever. Rock critic Ken Tucker says his new album, Hot Dog!, successfully incorporates the sound and spirit of early rock and roll. A reissue of live recordings is also worth checking out.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews recent releases by Jesse Winchester and Guy Clark, two country songwriters who are popular with critics, but who haven't yet found mainstream success. Tucker says Winchester's album leans toward new age, while Guy Clark's work may have more in common with folk than country.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews his favorite songs of the moment, performed by Annie Lennox and Al Green, Lucinda Williams, Shinehead, Billy Bragg, and Fairground Attraction

Last year, Ken Tucker reviewed albums by Randy Travis and Dwight Yoakum, whom he thought had the power to shake up the country music establishment. Now they are the establishment, both with new albums. Tucker says Travis gives listeners a postmodern take on traditional country; Yoakum has fashioned himself the genre's Raymond Chandler, with songs that are brooding and sometimes offensive.