Redferrin

Redferrin writes country songs with the cadence of hip-hop underneath them: plainspoken verses about bad nights and worse decisions, delivered more like talk than like twang, over guitars that stay hard and bright. It is modern country that keeps the storytelling and borrows its swing from somewhere else entirely.

The songs run on hooks and on wordplay. Heartbreak gets a shrug, drinking gets a raised eyebrow, and the same mistakes get made again because that is what people do. Arrangements set electric guitar against programmed drums, and the vocal slides between singing and something much closer to rap phrasing. Titles such as "Jack and Diet Coke" and "Just Like Johnny" give a fair idea of the register, comic on the surface and bruised just underneath.

He came to music sideways, racing motocross competitively until a crash ended that and turned him toward writing instead. He worked as a songwriter for other artists before releasing records under his own name, and the catalogue has since moved from independent singles through the EP Old No. 7 to the album Been There Done That.

Live, the material is built for rooms where people are already on their feet. The tempos sit where a crowd can move and the choruses are written to be shouted back, so the songs do most of the work of running a room on their own. What carries over from the records is the looseness, nothing precious and nothing overworked.

It suits anyone who likes country that has stopped pretending it grew up without hip-hop in the truck: songs about ordinary wreckage, played loud, with enough craft under the jokes to hold up on a second listen.