There may be hell to pay, but Tyler Keith has no debts with the music industry as he’s provided us dividends through rich contributions to evolved and diverse enmeshed genres, haunting the Americana underground for maybe just a few decades, though he is anything but dead and buried.

The sound of this album, Hell to Pay, (from Black and Wyatt Records) is like slicing a paring knife through bone marrow. We get the edge from a cut and density of a southern rock sound. It feels gustatorily familiar and clean yet…raw.

Almost a year after its release, I’m still chewing on it, though is anything but gristle and doesn’t need any big critique from me other than a sincere appreciation for the album’s honesty.

Magnet Magazine ranked Hell to Pay as a top punk album in 2023. It was also in the top 10 for Memphis-based releases in the same year. To give that some context, other notable names on that roll call were from the likes of bands like boygenius and artists like Moneybagg Yo, which are standouts in their respective scenes. The difference for me is their spoon-fed and easy digestibility in today’s music market whereas Tyler Keith gives us this unique OG lens that respects a dark southern sound and then inverts it to show us an expanded dimension of sound and what he’s trying to say.

And I have a lot of respect for that process across every album he’s had a hand in creating. I think this has always been his strength as an artist, where it sounds vaguely like something heard before and likewise is a fresh transformative melting pot simultaneously.

Tyler Keith is Americana music.