Maybe the best country album of the year so far is Zach Top's Ain't in it for My Health. But maybe it's Carter Faith's lovely debut LP Cherry Valley. These albums have in common a palette of neo-traditional elements as redeployed by emerging twentysomething masters (it's Top's second album and Faith's first). Both are extraordinary singers in an updated traditional manner: Top's hyper-emotive baritone recalls Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley, and the amazing break in Faith's voice makes one think of Tammy Wynette or Dolly Parton. Faith's album, however, has a wider range of production styles, tempos, and lyric themes.
Carter Faith Jones, who was born in 2000 in NC, emerged from the songwriting program at Belmont University, which sits just off music row in Nashville. It's amazing what happens there, the alma mater of Trisha Yearwood, Brad Paisley, and Florida-Georgia Line. It might be one way into the Nashville songwriting machine, in which pairs and trios of writers gather in hotel rooms all around town to knock out hits. Faith co-wrote all the songs here, with Ashley Monroe and Shane McAnally among many others.
It's a set of 15 songs, presented in an eclectic and coherent suite. I don't usually think of contemporary country albums as "carefully sequenced," but this one is: it develops coherently as a good novel, and each song also presents a contrast to the previous one. It starts quietly, rises, rocks and falls. Listening to the whole hour doesn't bore you. (Here we might compare Flight Risk, the recent album by another young killer, Karley Scott Collins, where all 16 songs are at a similar middling tempo and many have similar lyric themes. I admire it, but it also starts to drag.)
The title song leads with strings and piano, and a slow nostalgic flavor: a beautiful and sad item that almost blossoms into hope. Immediately she moves us on to "Sex Drugs, and Country Music": "once I tried all three," she says, "I found my trinity." Sometimes she manifests a sophisticated, Patsy-Cline-type persona. Not here: "I kissed and told 'til the word got out that I could tie a cherry stem with my mouth" or "When I first heard pedal steel, I knew that God was real."
If you like traditional country music, you may flow into ecstasy with Bar Star, a classic honky-tonk number. The video features Billy Bob Thornton; that's cool, but I hope they’re not dating, as Thornton was definitely not born in 2000. "Bar Star" was written by a committee that includes Faith, Aaron Raitiere, and Tyler Halverson, who are fine recording artists in their own right. For all I know, they all met in the cafeteria at Belmont, or maybe at the Bluebird. I first heard Carter as she sang harmony with Halverson on one of my favorite songs of 2024, Tiffany Blue.
Some of the rocking songs, such as the "Jolene"-themed "Betty" ("I bet he's with Betty right now") or "Grudge" (which recalls Taylor Swift's great Better Than Revenge) might lead you to lose track for a moment of what a fine singer Carter Faith really is, but slow burners such as "If I Had Never Lost My Mind" will remind you quickly. My favorites have her yodeling and soaring in an accomplished fashion, as on "Bar Star."
After all that, it pleases me that Faith can also sing a slow sad song in a moving fashion. I particularly love the string-drenched piece of hopeful sadness known as "Changed," a song I want to send to my exes, to tell them I still love them. The arrangement almost recalls something by Nelson Riddle, but the vocals whisper the lovely lyric right into your ear, as also on the attempt at self-healing that closes the album, "Still a Lover."
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell