Colter Wall – Memories and Empties

If you’ve ever bailed on country radio because everything sounded like a truck commercial over an EDM loop, Colter Wall’s new record feels like a hard reset. Memories and Empties isn’t “real country” in the annoying gatekeeper way — it’s real in the sense that it sounds like something that accidentally slipped through a time portal from a 1973 jukebox and landed on your turntable today. No trap hats. No pop drops. No focus-grouped “yeehaw” moments. Just a baritone, a band, and songs that smell like cigarette smoke and spilled beer instead of energy drink sponsorships.

“This thing is going to be COUNTRY” — and yeah, it is

Wall cut this one at RCA Studio A in Nashville, producing it himself alongside Patrick Lyons and leaning heavily on his road band, the Scary Prairie Boys. It’s his fifth studio album, and he walked in with a pretty simple brief: he wanted to make a straight-ahead country album. Mission accomplished. Memories and Empties is ten tracks of old-school honky-tonk, barroom two-step, and slow-dance misery, inspired explicitly by ’70s-era country — the Merle-and-The-Strangers lane, not the polyester-variety-show lane. The drums are dry, the pedal steel actually cries instead of doing ambient pad duty, and the whole thing sounds like it was made for a dance floor where people still know how to waltz. In an era where “country” too often means pop vocals in a cowboy hat, Wall is stubbornly making records that don’t chase radio, playlists, or trends. He doesn’t have to cosplay working-class either; the guy actually is a rancher from Saskatchewan and still sounds like he just walked in from checking fence line.

1,800 miles from Music Row — on purpose

Opener and lead single “1800 Miles” is the thesis statement and the middle finger. Wall literally frames the song as being “short on flashing lights and rhinestone clothes,” a line that lands like a shrug and a challenge at the same time. Musically, it’s lean: Tele twang, pedal steel carving holes in your chest, and that ridiculous baritone parked front and center. It swings enough to keep dancers happy, but there’s a grit sitting under everything — you can hear the band playing, not just performing parts. It feels live because a lot of it is: the album was recorded with the band in the room, and you can hear that bleed and looseness in the fills and turnarounds. Where modern country tends to flatten out into Spotify-core beige, “1800 Miles” feels like a location. You can picture the bar. You can smell the wood. You can absolutely see the one neon sign that’s been broken since 1994.

Songs that sound like they already existed

The tracklist is tight and no one’s wasting your time:

1800 Miles
My Present Just Gets Past Me
Like the Hills
Memories and Empties
It’s Getting So (That a Man Can’t Go Into Town Just to Have Him a Drink)
Living By the Hour
4/4 Time
The Longer You Hold On
Back to Me
Summer Wages

There are no skits, no interludes, no TikTok bait. Every song is a full plate. “My Present Just Gets Past Me” feels like classic Colter: a guy pinned between nostalgia and the creeping realization that time doesn’t care about your feelings. The writing is plainspoken without being dull; he never over-writes, never tries to prove how clever he is. The clever part is how simple he keeps it. The title track, “Memories and Empties,” is exactly what it sounds like — half about bottles, half about the ghosts that sit on the barstool next to you. It’s one of those songs that sounds like it should’ve been a Willie deep cut from 1976, but somehow nobody wrote it until now. Then you get to “It’s Getting So (That a Man Can’t Go Into Town Just to Have Him a Drink),” which is both a perfect country song title and a low-key commentary on how every simple pleasure now comes bundled with noise, drama, or somebody trying to sell you something. It’s funny without turning into a novelty track. “4/4 Time” is basically a mission statement for the record’s rhythm section: this isn’t stadium bombast, it’s dance-hall functional. The groove is there to hold people, not “go viral.” And closing with “Summer Wages” — an Ian Tyson classic — is a quietly brilliant move. Wall doesn’t reinvent it so much as park it right next to his own songs and say, “Yeah, this is the neighborhood I live in.” It fits so well you could convince someone he wrote it.

How it stacks up against modern country’s mess

Here’s the honest bit: Memories and Empties is not going to convert people who want their “country” glossy, hooky, and indistinguishable from Top 40 with a twang filter. That’s fine. This album isn’t trying to win that game. Where a lot of modern country is obsessed with sounding current, Wall is obsessed with sounding rooted. While Nashville is busy layering synthetic claps under lyrics about tailgates and canned whiskey, he’s making a record that you could drop into a Merle Haggard setlist and it wouldn’t flinch. And crucially, it doesn’t feel like costume drama or “throwback aesthetics.” The production doesn’t wink at you. There’s no ironic retro filter. It just is what it is: steel, fiddle, piano, live band, voice. You can call that “traditionalist” if you want, but honestly it just feels like music that doesn’t care what year it is. That’s the biggest contrast with the mainstream right now. So much of modern country feels engineered to be consumed quickly and forgotten even quicker — content to be skipped once it’s served its purpose to the algorithm. Memories and Empties feels built for replay, for living with, for putting on while you drive at 2 a.m. and spiral a bit.

TL;DR (for the Skippers)

Colter Wall’s Memories and Empties is straight-ahead, ’70s-flavored honky-tonk and barroom country — zero pop gloss, zero EDM hats.
Recorded live-ish with his road band, it feels like a smoky dance hall, not a focus-grouped stadium jingle.
Standouts: “1800 Miles,” “My Present Just Gets Past Me,” “It’s Getting So (That a Man Can’t Go Into Town Just to Have Him a Drink),” and the closer, “Summer Wages.”
Lyrically it’s simple, heavy, and adult — no tailgate cosplay, just people, time, regret, and cheap booze.
It doesn’t chase modern country trends at all; it sits comfortably next to Merle, Willie, and Ian Tyson instead of the Spotify “New Country” playlist.
Weaknesses: a couple tracks can blur together on first listen if you’re not already into his dead-serious style.
If you miss country that sounds like a bar, not a brand campaign, this one’s a full-album, front-to-back spin.

Verdict: He’s not saving country. He’s just doing it right.

Memories and Empties isn’t Colter Wall fixing the genre or leading some grand revolution. It’s better than that: it’s one guy making the exact record he wants to make, in a lane most of Nashville considers commercially suicidal, and somehow it feels more alive than most of what’s topping the charts. If you’re exhausted by the playlist sludge and want something that sounds human, dusty, and quietly defiant, this album hits like a cold beer in a bar that doesn’t even have a TV. Is it perfect? No. A couple tracks blur together on first listen, and if you’re not already on board with Wall’s dead-serious delivery, you might wish for one more tempo change or curveball. But honestly, that’s nitpicking. Memories and Empties is exactly what he promised: straight-ahead country, no garnish, no corporate shine — and in 2025, that alone feels almost rebellious. Finally: Spin it front to back. Then do it again, preferably somewhere about 1,800 miles from Music Row.

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