Chris Stapleton’s debut album Traveller blazes and smokes like a campfire, billowing tall flames one minute and smoldering coals the next. Stapleton is country to the bone — a Kentucky songwriter with a bluegrass pedigree — and he makes no radio plays here, opting instead to remold country waltzes and simmer through brooding outlaw instincts. For all its crackling rebellion, though, the real draw in Traveller is the way it illuminates the country genre for what it really is, and more importantly, what it could be. –Caitlin

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