Charley Crockett – Lonesome Drifter – 2025

Lonesome Drifter is the fifteenth album by American Country artist Charley Crockett. I, of course, haven’t heard about him before. It’s the curse of being too versatile in my listening experiences. The result is that you don’t know enough about anything. I mean, if I only wrote about country, I would have known about Lonesome Drifter weeks ahead of its release, and Charley Crockett would have been a household name.

But that’s not the reality. I listen to all kinds of music, even if Country isn’t my first choice every day. I find it too often to be soothing and easy listening. It’s easy to follow the lyrics if I want to, and there are not too many “strange” things going on in the harmonies or time signatures. I realize that I’m approaching this from the bottom of my prejudices, of course. But that’s my main approach to country.

And Lonesome Drifter fits right in with that. It’s easy listening. Charley Crockett’s voice has pretty typical country techniques, I think. It’s not as emphasized as in some other country music, which I of course can’t exemplify at the moment as my frame of reference is so small. But maybe if you think Dwight Yoakam? He’s got a more accented country voice in my opinion. You know what I mean?

Lonesome Drifter doesn’t get too exciting for me, but I think it’s quite listenable. It’s more or less exactly what I expected. Nice music to have on in the background for me. It doesn’t bother me—but it doesn’t really excite me either.