When Lil Nas X released Old Town Road in 2018, country music didn’t know what to do. Billboard’s country charts decided the song wasn’t country enough to be considered for the charts, so Nas went back and remixed it with Billy Ray Cyrus and we know what happened next. It also helped make country popular with other crowds. Oliver Tree makes a similar attempt to cross-pollinate on his second album, Cowboy Tears.

The singer-songwriter and performance artist, originally from Santa Cruz, spent a big chunk of his quarantine in Northern California on his grandparents’ large property, where he found himself playing acoustic guitar and taking care of their animals. Inspired by the often-detrimental effects of toxic masculinity, he looked for a way to ask men to emote: Stop withholding emotions, stop letting your anger erupt in violent ways, instead just cry. Out in the open.

That’s the thread woven throughout all of Cowboy Tears, which is anchored by the opening and closing tracks, “Cowboy’s Don’t Cry” and “Cowboy Tears,” and features a series of songs in between that reimagine American country landscapes and ideas. In the opening, the cowboy can’t say goodbye to his lover who’s now gone or to the sun that’s sunk into the Wild West. But on the closing track, he’s done a 180, singing, “Cowboy tears/ It’s OK to cry/ Cowboy tears/ Raindrops in the sky,” over a rocking guitar.

“California” could be the most modern country song in recent memory. Instead of painting images of parties filled with beer, trucks and girls in bikinis, Oliver Tree sings of the rugged, expansive California landscape, painting it like the Wild West for which it used to be known. Though his voice is drawly and almost intentionally off-key during the opening, he shares an undying love for the state that many locals do.

“California, that’s where I lived my whole life/ California, bury me there when I die,” he sings during the chorus. He appreciates the diversity of the sprawling state, from the compact San Francisco to the luxurious Hollywood Hills, the imposing redwoods of the north to the expanse of the beige central valley.

On “Suitcase Full of Cash,” he continues with the renegade imagery, starting with a radio call searching for unmarked dollar bills. He early aughts sounds here, singing about how he doesn’t care how much money you earn, pointing out some of the richest people really only have money.

His vices are in full swing on “Cigarettes,” where a single fast-paced guitar starts the track before drumming is mixed in. He sings of how his vices will kill him and that he honestly doesn’t care. “Fill me up with cancer/ Baby I can’t stop/ Smoke them when I want/ Lately that’s a lot,” he sings, forming an impenetrable casing around his opinion on what others think of him. Now that is very country.

“Swing & a Miss” finds Oliver Tree with a quieter acoustic guitar melody, pondering why everyone spends time looking to the past instead of toward the future. He channels an all too familiar millennial mindset in lyrics like, “If this is it, it’s a swing and a miss.” On “Get Well Soon,” the acoustic guitar remains along with the song’s very twangy vocals during the verses, only to take an electronically distorted detour for the chorus.

Cowboy Tears might cause some fights about how country the album really is. But pay those no mind, this a piece of work where Oliver Tree set out to reframe the styles and sounds expected of the genre. Though it may not be for everyone, it’s an interesting listen.

Follow Domenic Strazzabosco at Twitter.com/domenicstrazz and Instagram.com/domenicstrazz.