The Best New Country and Roots Albums of 2026 So Far

As we near the halfway pole of the musical year, it’s time to reflect back on the best albums that have been released so far. The top ten albums listed below should be considered early Album of the Year contenders. If we’re being honest, 2026 feels like a slightly down year for top albums so far. But that doesn’t mean there’s still not some great stuff you don’t want to miss.

PLEASE NOTE: This only includes albums that have been reviewed by Saving Country Music so far. Just because an album is not included here doesn’t mean it’s not good, or won’t be reviewed in the future.

Recommendations and opinions on albums is encouraged, including leaving your own list of favorite albums in the comments section below. But nothing has been “forgotten,” and no list is illegitimate just because one particular album is left off, or a certain album is included. So be constructive with your comments.

Aside from the first ten albums being the top recommendations, the albums are presented in no particular order.

Emily Scott Robinson – Appalachia

It’s hard to not slip into hyperbole when listening to Emily Scott Robinson. Her new album Appalachia doesn’t make it any easier on you. Despite previous Song of the Year accolades and Best Album contention, it’s this one that makes it difficult to impossible to resist believing in the awesome power of music, and of this particular artist. It’s a test of mettle and fortitude to not have to choke back tears, to not be transfixed and metamorphosized by the experience. Simply put, it’s difficult to impossible to argue life isn’t better on Earth due to this music.

Some albums we measure against their peers of a given year. For others, it’s necessary to venture to the catalogs of other years to find comparable works. Emily Scott Robinson’s Appalachia is one of those albums, with the only question left to resolve being what its impact might be. But for those who venture to listen, the impact will be alleviation, gratefulness, and a renewed fortitude to face life’s challenges and the fears we have of what’s happening in the world to the point of feeling nothing short of transformational. (read review)

Low Gap – Geneva

Straddling the border between Kentucky and Ohio, youth and maturity, divinity and sin, sobriety and drunkenness, two brothers going by the names Gus and Phin deftly explore the duality of life and man in songs that carry wisdom well beyond their years, while not overlooking the importance of a song to entertain.

They’re called Low Gap, and even though a single of theirs might’ve slid onto your radar as far back as 2021, Geneva is their very intentional debut album. It’s also a doozy, and the kind of debut every band wants to forward, but only do when they’re patient, persistent, bring forth songs that are battle tested and road worn, and the players are inherently talented and true to themselves like the Johnson brothers. (read review)

Rachel Brooke – This One’s For You

Rachel Brooke already has a stacked catalog of badass country and Gothic roots albums that have made her outright revered by a fervent assembly of fans. But she has never been more country, her voice has never been showcased so exquisitely, her songwriting has never been so sharp and clever, and the music has never been so complimentary as it is on her new album This One’s For You. That’s not to sell any other title from her past short. That’s to compliment on how she career’d out on this one.

The genius of This One’s For You is how Rachel Brooke starts with a foundation very traditional country musical tones, and verses hewn from entertaining rural parlance, including delivered in talk singing just like the oldtimers. Then in certain songs, she throws down these exquisitely insightful and brutally true observations about the dystopian technological abyss we’re all staring into. On their face, these bouts of modern perspective are stridently anachronistic set against the classic country background. But this is what gives these moments a sharpness and power. (read review)

Trey Hensley – Can’t Outrun The Blues

It turns out this Trey Hensley guy is pretty good at music. He does things on the guitar you’re not exactly sure if they’re even humanly possible—at least they seemed impossible until he makes the leap and sticks the landing right in front of you, defying belief and logic. There’s no trickery here though. This is human fingers moving across wood and wire to tickle the eternally relevant sounds of the universe for your audio edification. A.I., eat your heart out.

There might be guitar players out there that just like Hensley, have achieved the very pinnacle of skill and capability on the guitar dictated by the laws of physics. But nobody is able to pull off the kinds of bursts and runs Hensley perfects like rolling out of bed in the morning, making it all look so effortless that it’s almost maddening to understudies. (read review)

Coleman Jennings – Lead You Home

Herein lies what might be one of the greatest Western-inspired albums released in this year, or frankly, in many other years. With his debut album produced by Dave Cobb, the young-in-age, but old-in-soul Austin-based musician Coleman Jennings puts on a clinic of originally-composed and perfectly-produced songs that call to mind the white-capped rocky peaks, painted deserts, wide prairies, and the playground of imagination alive in the American West.

What’s for sure is that Coleman, Dave Cobb, and Big Loud are all reading the moment correctly. What audiences crave is a rugged authenticity roughly-hewn into songs that come with the bark still on and the moments thick with emotion and feeling. Citing Townes and Blaze isn’t simply lip service for Coleman. This music is delightfully uninterested in striking a sensibility for radio audiences or trend chasers. (read review)

Joshua Ray Walker – Ain’t Dead Yet

Even before Joshua Ray Walker stared into the abyss of his own mortality, he possessed an uncommon connection to the emotional rivers that ebb and flow through our lives, and how to render those experiences into song. Then he sings those songs with a deftness nearing the angelic, allowing the stories and messages to stir the inner soul of his captive audience, resulting in an experience difficult to impossible to achieve through any other conventional means.

Walker might remain independent, if not outright underground in the music universe. But his talent, his voice, his writing, and his his spirit soar so far beyond the corporeal plane. As he sings in the full band version of his song “Thank You For Listening,” “If this were my final curtain call, I’d have no regrets at all.” But we’re all beyond elated he remains with us, and be able to extend his catalog well into the future. (read review)

49 Winchester – Change of Plans

49 Winchester can do what many other artists and bands can. They prove this on their new album Change of Plans, sliding across many roots disciplines with authority. But few artists and bands can turn around and do what 49 Winchester does. That’s because they don’t have Isaac Gibson leading them into battle with an ascendant voice forged with Appalachian soul that perhaps only Chris Stapleton can best.

Change of Plans is like many of 49 Winchester’s previous albums, mixing straight country songs with more Southern rock sounds and bursts of the Muscle Shoals influence, but all seamlessly integrated. The difference here is in the more intentional texturing on certain songs, playing with rhythm dynamics and different tones, and trying to makes those influences and sounds more distinct track to track as opposed to just barreling ahead where it all blends together. (read review)

Charley Crockett – Clovis

Now this is the kind of Charley Crockett you want emanating out of your speakers: Greasy, rootsy, country more than anything else, but also seamlessly sliding between a myriad of classic American influences like only Crockett can do until you’re bathed in sepia-toned goodness, and are re-racking it again for a second swim through. His surprise album Clovis isn’t just a career-defining record. It’s an act of rebellion.

Only time will determine if Clovis is a career-defining record for Crockett. Surprise albums also tend to be better received since their best songs aren’t spoiled by early single releases. But what Clovis clearly is already is a turning point in Crockett’s career where he’s re-asserting who’s in control, taking grip of his own destiny, and proving to be not just one of the most prolific, but one of the most unpredictable and iconoclastic artists in country music. (read review)

JD Graham – Uppers & Downers

Sharing dispatches from the seedy and downtrodden side of life that ultimately blossoms into inspiring stories of redemption and renewal, JD Graham fearlessly mines the very depths of emotion as he explores the most involved contours of the songwriting discipline. This is an artist who only knows how to write the most brutally honest, the most touching and unburdening songs each time pen meets paper, knowing he might fail at finding an audience for it, but is never willing to settle for anything that feels even remotely empty or inferior.

How ironic is it that to took almost dying for places like Fox News, People Magazine, and Taste of Country to finally pay attention to JD Graham. It was for tragic reasons, but maybe the divinity was in the right place. Uppers & Downers is a career effort from JD Graham, revealing him as a world-class songwriter worthy of wide attention beyond any personal tragedy. (read review)

Kacey Musgraves – Middle of Nowhere

Exploring the in-between moments in life, and the in-between spaces on the American continent that often go forgotten is what the new Kacey Musgraves album Middle of Nowhere ventures to accomplish—along with exploring a more country sound that wasn’t just promised, but was delivered via the album’s 13 tracks.

Breaking through all the noise to the signal, Middle of Nowhere is a very strong offering, especially from the mainstream of country. It finds Musgraves understanding the moment country music is in, leaning into her traditional country influences, while also including some of the “Spacey Kacey” fairy dust magic that makes her so unique, and delivering an album that deserves to be a retrenching of her as one of the top women in popular country music. (read review)