Tyler Childers

Kentuckian country singer-songwriter Tyler Childers debuted at 19 with Bottles and Bibles (2011), a collection of old-fashioned yarns for acoustic guitar and mountain holler (and occasionally a fiddle) like Hard Times.

His best-seller Purgatory (2017) was a lavishly arranged affair, recorded with Sturgill Simpson on guitar, Miles Miller on drums, Stuart Duncan on fiddle and Russ Paul on other instruments, a radio-friendly take on Hank Williams' honky-tonk (I Swear to God), on bluegrass (Purgatory), on Nashville's country-pop (Whitehouse Road) and on Appalachian old-time music. Childers is both a literate writer and an emotional singer.

Country Squire (2019) continued the collaboration with Sturgill Simpsons and contains All Your'n and the didgeridoo-tinged Bus Route. Long Violent History (2020) is mostly instrumental and mostly devoted to covers of traditionals.

The triple-disc concept Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? (2022) presents eight songs in three different formats. The songs are mostly old gospel songs, plus a cover of Hank Williams' Old Country Church and a new version of Purgatory. The "Hallelujah" disc, recorded live in the studio, sounds like a country-soul album from the 1970s. The "Jubilee" disc disfigures those songs by arranging them with horns, strings and backing vocals. The third disc totally destroys the songs with glitchy electronics and drum-machines, like a remix album done by a hip-hop producer. Overall, it's an interesting idea, although the source material is rather mediocre.