One of the most consistent weeks of the year.
Patty Griffin
Crown of Roses
A songwriter who was wise beyond her years from the opening bars of “Moses” a lifetime ago now tackles themes of mortality head-on. She navigates the topic with the insight, empathy, and peerless linguistic gifts that are her trademarks. Lovely and essential stuff.
Ruby Shay
Hitch a Ride
I’m immediately obsessed with her cool, distinctive vocal tone and how her phrasing glides over this purposeful blend of country, blues, folk, and jazz influences. This would play well both for traditionalists and progressive genre fans, which is quite the accomplishment.
Cleo Reed
Cuntry
Not the disruptive genre provocation promised by the title, this nonetheless impresses for the threads of folk protest traditions (“Americana,” “Women at War”) spun through an incendiary take on modern R&B, hip-hop, and rock forms. A talent I’m happy to have discovered.
Tyler Childers
Snipe Hunter
Impossible to overstate the significance of this generational talent’s unleashing of his inimitable holler yelp on songs about the universal, innate human capacities for growth and change, no matter the type of bloodborne diseases carried by one’s local fauna.
Impossible to overstate, too, how ill-equipped Rick Rubin is for the task of highlighting the densest thorn patch of songs Childers has yet written or the most varied vocal performances he’s yet committed to record. Rubin simply does not work well within the country idiom in any meaningful sense.
The best-case scenario is that, over time, Childers and his band will make these songs soar in a live set where they aren’t beholden to Rubin’s often inexplicable and ineffective production choices that draw too much attention to themselves. As is, it’s to Childers’ credit that this works at all.
The usual suspects will be mad that this isn’t a re-recording of Purgatory and will scream about how the woke hurt them. Neither of those will ever be a real issue.
Instead, it’s a misguided belief that narratives like this need to sound like they’re in any way ashamed of their country origins.
As he did with Cash and The Chicks, Rubin has once again made one of the genre’s all-time greats sound like they’re at least a little bit embarrassed to have been who they were or that they needed to be more. Which is really the antithesis of what these tremendous songs are about.
Palmer Anthony
Rodeo Clown [EP]
This week’s Pledge, going more for Zimmerman’s frathouse than Westbrook’s. He at least has the sense to enlist Jessi Alexander to elevate one track here, but putting royalty money in Ryan Adams’ coffer in 2025 sure is a choice.
Alex Williams
Space Brain
He’s both skilled enough as a performer and sincere enough in his affection for this era of heavy metal for this covers album to work as more than a novelty. Testament to how well this works that he makes most of the songs sound like he wrote them himself.
Watchhouse
Rituals
Every moment of their folk-side of Americana is perfectly fine and pleasant and aiming squarely for Welch-Rawlings and, well, Mary Chapin Carpenter no longer has the dullest album I’ve heard this year.
Leave a Reply