You won't hear a whole lot of good country music on the radio these days, which will not be news to anyone who's gone seeking it there. Still, while a good part of what Nashville bluntly calls "product" is unbearable to anyone who desires songs that mean something or survive in memory for more than 10 seconds, a growing counter-culture of independent country artists is challenging the mainstream and hoping -- against what may be long odds -- to replace it. That movement takes what's worth preserving from the past and incorporating creative impulses into it so that the music can live and breathe anew.

Another way to put it: in some ways it is becoming less exhausting to be a country fan, at least if one is possessed of an adventurous disposition. If one knows where to listen, one has to spend less time wading through sludge to reach a green shore. The best of historical country remains preserved and available, of course, but at the moment the prospect of thrilling fresh material is out there, too.

As in all revival efforts in any genre, the idea is not so much note-for-note resurrecting as it is reimagining. Brennen Leigh's style gets about as close to the original (mid-century honkytonk) as one can get without being drowned by it. There is an undeniable likability to what she's doing, in part a product of distance as well as a sensibility touched by the modern. It's familiar enough on a surface level but not so fully under that surface, where hipper humor and unexpected twists lurk.

Yet we've heard sparely produced, pedal-steel discs before, and no sensible listener is going to complain about that. Pedal steel defined the country records I remember from my childhood. Leigh's band has that wonderful sound mastered (and ably applied to a Western swing tune), and she sings the songs (of a style associated with the era encompassing Kitty Wells through Loretta Lynn) as perfectly as any master you can name.

The songs on Don't You Ever Give Up on Love chronicle a difficult breakup that Brennen suffered in real life. It moves from the initial shock of betrayal to satisfaction at the unpleasant fate of the man who hurt her, then on to her own happiness where she validates the admonition in the title. The dozen tracks each document a stage in that evolution. Even the sad songs, however, don't feel off-puttingly morbid; the occasional vengeful sentiments are leavened with a humor that manages not to feel mean-spirited, however much it's born of genuine anger.

The emotional confusion gets resolved on the final cut, in the endearing "I'm Easy to Love after All," which could pass as a 1950s Patti Page number. That occasions the reflection that Page is a criminally underrated pop vocalist, perhaps because her interpretations, even if touching in their own right, are largely devoid of any jazz inflection. "Easy to Love," however, bears the sort of gripping melody that stuck in the heads of Page fans in decades past. The theme -- the affirmation of one's own worth and of one's own right to happiness -- is given moving voice; actually, Leigh could not deliver it more convincingly. I'm pleased that she chose Page's style as the vehicle best suited to carry such insight.

The bigger country revival of the 2020s has its (musical) right and left ends, along with all else between. If Leigh represents its conservative extreme, the extraordinarily gifted Sierra Ferrell occupies the other, with an approach that reinvents country and its history in a fashion one could not have imagined possible. Each is a major figure, and each proves that life and art are to be found, still comatose but possibly about to awaken, within the genre.

Incidentally, you may wish to check out my belated review, earlier this year in this space (March 8), of Leigh's Ain't Through Honky Tonkin' Yet (2023).