Country Squire

Twenty-something East Kentuckian Tyler Childers is the latest standout in a lineage of serious-minded singer-songwriters who've chafed at portrayal of their native Appalachia as a boorish, backward place.

The nine vignettes on Country Squire continue the plainspoken but keenly perceptive storytelling from his 2017 breakthrough Purgatory, offering humanizing sketches of struggle, disappointment, and resilience. Some of his loosely autobiographical numbers wryly measure the distance between the modest aspirations he harbored back when his following was merely regional and the more encumbered reality he's living now. Though this album marks his first partnership with a major label, he kept the producers who steered Purgatory - kindred spirit Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson - and they've once again framed Childers with lean, loping performances from bluegrass and country session vets.

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Apple Music