Country music

Ken Tucker says The River & The Thread is a travelogue; a timeless work of comfort and quiet joy.

A new nine-hour box set, titled Sun Country Box: 1950-1959, collects Sun Records' country output.

Jason Isbell's Southeastern, Kanye West's Yeeezus and an assortment of remarkable women dominated the Fresh Air critic's year in listening.

Ken Tucker calls the country singer-songwriter's new 12 Stories a "modestly amazing album." Every song is striking, textured and finely detailed.

On Three Chords and the Truth, bluegrass musician James King picks from the canon of country music to rearrange its songs as bluegrass. On The Bluegrass Album, country star Alan Jackson has recorded his first collection of bluegrass music — some classics, some originals.

The singer's new album is a work of great, accomplished craft about the pointlessness of crafting anything you care about, because the world is just going to ruin it on you.

Country-music star Vince Gill and steel guitarist Paul Franklin have teamed up to record a new concept album called Bakersfield.

"Accidental Racist" launched an Internet firestorm and threatened to overshadow everything else on the country singer's fine new album, Wheelhouse. Even in that polarizing song, Paisley's biggest sin is that he's well-meaning in a way that topples too easily into sentimentality.

Cash spent half a century in the limelight as a country singer turned American icon. Between 1958, when he first recorded for Columbia, until 1986, when it didn't renew his contract, he recorded more than 50 singles and 60 albums for the label.

The talented young singer-songwriter has as much in common with John Prine as she does with Kenny Chesney. With any luck, Same Trailer, Different Park is the start of a long career that will make both Musgraves' core audience and other open-minded listeners sit up and take notice.