Notable CDs

Joey and Rory Feek knew that, due to Joey’s inoperable cancer, this album might be their last. And sadly—Joey died in early March—they were right. As a rule, performances recorded in the valley of the shadow of death take on heightened significance, and these are no exception. But they also stand on their own. The gentle country-bluegrass settings and Joey’s delicately quavering voice are ideal for freshening the songs, which are familiar enough to need freshening and rich enough to deserve it.

Cayamo Sessions At Sea

This project grew out of Buddy Miller’s annual Caribbean cruises and could be called a labor of love except that it doesn’t seem to have required much labor. Miller and his special guests ease so comfortably into the material—mostly country, country-rock, and folk-rock classics initially recorded between 1949 and 1972—that it might as well be denim. The chronological exception is Doug Seegers’ “Take the Hand of Jesus,” which makes its debut and, its contemporaneity notwithstanding, somehow sounds older, and more eternal, than the rest.

The Essential Billy Joe Shaver

Like many of Sony’s “Essential” compilations, this one falls short of capturing its subject’s essence. But it doesn’t fall so far short that newbies won’t find it whetting their appetites for more of one of the most ornery Christians ever to raise his honky-tonk voice in song or to use it in spiritual warfare. “The Devil Made Me Do It the First Time” highlights a big part of Shaver’s story. “Jesus Christ, What a Man” and the Johnny Cash duet “You Can’t Beat Jesus Christ” highlight another.

Wynonna & The Big Noise

The country-rock “noise” made by Wynonna Judd’s band isn’t that big, but it’s big enough to allow Judd to lay claim to the ground her eclectic cast of composers have in common. Among the motifs is the gospel. A heartbroken widower gets by with a lot of help from Jesus and a jukebox. Judd herself declares God isn’t finished with her yet, but she promises to lean on His grace and Psalm 23 until He is. Maybe she should’ve christened her band Still Small Voice.

Spotlight

Donald Trump is the Republican front-runner, and if any current album taps into the energy driving his popularity, it’s Hank Williams Jr.’s It’s About Time (Nash Icon). “They put an edge on that one,” says Williams of his band at the conclusion of “God Fearin’ Man,” adding that the band played as if it was angry. Trump’s many supporters are frequently accused of being angry as well.

Anger, however, isn’t the only, or even the predominant, emotion wagging Williams. There’s also nostalgia for David Allan Coe, Merle Haggard, and George Jones (“Those Days Are Gone”), proud bitter clinging (“God and Guns”), and rugged individualism (“Just Call Me Hank” and “Dress Like an Icon”—two of the five cuts that Williams either wrote or co-wrote). There’s even outright gospel. “We just nailed that,” Williams says at the conclusion of the Reverend Charlie Jackson’s “Wrapped Up, Tangled Up in Jesus (God’s Got It).” And he’s right. —A.O.