BRAD PAISLEY Wheelhouse  [Arista Nashville] Since upping the ante with the musically and lyrically progressive American Saturday Night in 2009, Brad Paisley has positioned himself as a guitar-slinging messiah sent here to abolish a rift between red and blue states. He directly addresses that divide multiple times on Wheelhouse, a hodgepodge of pop culture references and patriotic salutes. On the bluesy “Accidental Racist,” notable for a bizarre... 

KIX BROOKS New to This Town [Arista Nashville] After 20 years as one-half of the country duo Brooks & Dunn, Kix Brooks goes solo with this schizophrenic set of midtempo Tex-Mex tunes and pop-tinged ballads. Brooks wrote nine of the 12 songs, and throughout, he examines the life of the modern-day cowboy. There are songs about whiskey and hotheaded women (“Moonshine Road,” “Tattoo”), along with the freedoms and costs of traveling America’s... 

BRAD PAISLEY This Is Country Music [Arista Nashville] With its playful humor, above-average songwriting and stellar musicianship, Brad Paisley’s eighth studio album includes some of his strongest work in recent years—and some of his most uneven. If his trademark boy-next-door charm fades a bit on tepid tunes like “Working on a Tan” and “Camouflage,” he makes up for it on the ballad “A Man Don’t Have to Die” and the rip-roaring Western...