Red Shahan releases new album "Hard Land"

Red Shahan released his fifth album, "Hard Land," reviewed by Saving Country Music at 8.3 out of 10. The review called the record a vivid trip through Shahan's West Texas songwriting, built on the sandpaper winds, red skies and hard living of the region he writes about.

The album carries a real connection to filmmaker and television producer Taylor Sheridan, who has drawn on Shahan's music for his shows and co-wrote the song "Ghosts of the Panhandle Wind" with him. The first song fans heard from "Hard Land" was "Cotton Fire," which turned up in a scene on Sheridan's series "Landman" before the album's release.

The review singled out "Cotton Fire" and opener "Welcome To Country Hell" as the record's bookends. "A farmer grows back taller when you cut him at the knees," Shahan sings on "Cotton Fire," a line the review pointed to as exactly what listeners come to his music for, while "Welcome To Country Hell" leans on resonator guitar and unflinching images of generational trauma and addiction in rural America.

Between those two songs, tracks like "Runaway" offer some relief with softer, Tom Petty-esque melodies, before the title track returns to the album's central idea: as hard as the open plains are, the review said, city life can be worse. "Ghosts of the Panhandle Wind," the Sheridan co-write, closes the record with what the review called one of its most infectious moments.

The review closed by comparing "Hard Land" to a weathered structure worth a second look: listeners come for "the worn, cracked, and rusty beauty of an old barn slowly melting back into the rugged earth," it said, but stay to unravel the record's characters and lyrics. "Hard Land" lands in the release calendar among the rest of August's new country releases from Red Shahan.