As the old philosophical question goes, “If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound?” That query feels newly relevant in the age of modern music-making.
We live in a world where anyone can hear virtually any song ever recorded, anytime, anywhere (provided there’s an internet connection). Today’s artist isn’t just competing with peers for attention, but with the entire history of recorded sound. The forest is so dense with trees that it becomes impossible to hear anything at all.
That context frames the central question Mike Richmond raises in the press notes for his first solo record: why bother making music? As the former Love Tractor guitarist puts it, “Why am I writing these songs? Is anyone going to care? I’m an old guy who played in a pretty…
Category: americana
On his third LP, Tender Country, Thomas Csorba delves into the softer side of country music, eschewing rowdy barroom burners in favor of a more laid-back, emotional connection to life. The album’s title is fitting, considering the tenderness woven throughout these songs. That’s not to say Csorba is above singing a good drinking song, as evidenced by “Homemade Margaritas.” Only his version involves moving out to the patio and sharing drinks over a citronella candle, with one ear tuned to the sleeping baby inside.
Across ten subdued tracks, Csorba explores love, family, and the everyday emotions of life. Carried by fiddle and guitars, “Lived In” is a perfect example. Csorba describes an ordinary house, with glitter worked into the floorboards…
After three excellent but generally underappreciated albums in what is more or less the Americana/singer/songwriter genre, Sam Morrow was ready for a change.
On his simply titled fourth release, and first in two years, he leaves most of the country influences that informed those discs, cranks up the guitars and charges into a stronger, sonic punch implied by the collection’s name.
While there are plenty of Southern red clay guts here, he sells himself short on the “boogie” part. Like Blackberry Smoke, which this resembles in the best ways, Morrow is too sharp of a songwriter to delve into the clichéd beer, booze and broads mode most associate with the title. Even when name-checking the “party all night/…
…Originally shelved by his label in 2001, this 21-track record has finally seen an official release.
The Suicide Handbook is Ryan Adams’ most elusive and mythic recordings. The album is a raw and intimate collection of songs that captures the songwriter at his most unguarded. Recorded at the beginning of his solo career and long circulating only through bootlegs, the album has earned a legendary status among die-hard fans and fans of the Americana genre alike for its stark stripped-back beauty.
Acoustic arrangements and hushed, late-night vocals, these songs feel like private confessions set to tape. Adams leans into themes of heartbreak, isolation, and emotional vulnerability, delivering recordings that are as fragile…
…Former members of Zebra Hunt have got together in Seattle to form Fallen Oaks, and we should rejoice that they did. Lead vocalist and guitarist Robert Mercer has written a fine assembly of songs and is ably backed by Erik Bennett on bass, Mitch Leffler on drums, Zack Erb on fiddle, and the wonderful pedal steel player Paul Hutzler. Will this record change your life? Maybe not, but it should, and at the very least, will add something special to the days you play it. ‘Roadside Prayers’ and ‘Stucco House’ are a must, along with the plaintive guitar on ‘Motel’.
‘Roadside Prayers’ is a three-minute, stunning alternative country ballad lamenting the love and loss of a friend. The guitar and mournfully aching violin work perfectly. The change of…
Heretics & Heritage is the fourth album from Leeds-based Lewis Pugh, combining both bluegrass and traditional folk/roots influences. Pugh himself plays banjo, guitar, snare drum and double bass, in addition to lead vocals, and all but two songs are self-penned.
The album lineup includes two members of north-east bluegrass band The Often Herd, in Evan Davies on mandolin, and Niles Krieger on fiddle. The opening track, ‘Big Stone Lifter’, is an up-tempo bluegrass number, with pedal steel courtesy of Stephen Hicken Jr., an addition to the usual bluegrass lineup including the aforesaid mandolin, fiddle and banjo. Indeed, the pedal steel is a very effective addition to the sonic mix, providing a unifying thread through much of the album.
…includes three bonus tracks: covers of Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time,” William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” and Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
“Johnny can do what he wants,” Sturgill Simpson told Uncut when his new alias debuted on 2024’s Passage Du Desir, which found him rolling through Paris streets “like a cork in a bottle” while listening to ‘70s soft rock and Serge Gainsbourg.
His first five albums proper had burned Nashville bridges during an odyssey through outlaw country, psychedelia, synths and Kentucky bluegrass, while tracing the five metaphysical phases of the Western soul.
Johnny Blue Skies blew this preordained cycle away. He feels more real this time round, not…
Americana singer-songwriter Caleb Caudle enters a significant new chapter with his seventh studio album, Heavy Thrill. Arriving at a time of profound personal and artistic transition, the record was created as Caudle and his wife prepared to welcome their first child. It also marks his first venture as a self-producer, giving the North Carolina native complete creative control over the project. Recorded at the legendary Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and later mixed by renowned engineer Jacquire King and mastered by Pete Lyman, the album reflects both growth and self-discovery.
Across its ten songs, Heavy Thrill explores themes of ageing, uncertainty, perseverance, and the feeling of being an outsider…
By 1977, Tony Rice had already established a distinct voice within bluegrass. His guitar playing-precise, fluid, and rhythmically grounded-drew from the tradition while introducing a broader musical vocabulary. His self-titled third album arrived at a moment when that approach was beginning to take clearer shape.
Originally released in 1977, Tony Rice brought together a group of musicians working at a similar edge of the genre. Featuring collaborators including David Grisman, J.D. Crowe, and Jerry Douglas, the album moves between traditional material and contemporary compositions, balancing established forms with a more open, ensemble-driven sound. The album returns June 5, 2026, newly remastered from the original tapes.
Brent Cobb is pulling the curtain back on the songwriting that has defined his career on his new acoustic album Live a Song, Write a Memory, Vol. 1.
Recorded at Capricorn Studios, the self-produced album captures every performance live and in a single take, and spans songs from across his catalog, including selections from the Grammy-nominated Shine on Rainy Day, fan favorites from Providence Canyon and No Place Left to Leave, and cuts made famous by other artists. Songs like “Come Home Soon” and “Country Bound” revisit defining moments in Cobb’s journey, while outside cuts like “Tailgate Blues” recorded by Luke Bryan and “Bar, Guitar and a Honky Tonk Crowd” by Whiskey Myers are brought back to the writer’s chair where they began.
Bella White blends rustic country melodies with thoughtful introspection on her hypnotic third album, 2026’s A Sign in the Weather. Recorded in the Canadian-born singer’s adopted home of New Orleans, the album finds White backed by her producer/guitarist/percussionist Ross Farbe with a core rhythm section of drummer Sam Gelband and bassist Gina Leslie. Also contributing at various times are fiddle player Patrick M’Gonigle, pedal steel guitarist Nicholai Shveitser, pianist Duncan Troast, guitarist Nick Corson, and singer Maddy Kirgo. Perhaps even more than on 2023’s Among Other Things, here White captures an intimate and homespun vibe. While that might be a nice side effect of having recorded the album at a friend’s historic shotgun-style house,…
After making their Dualtone label debut with 2024’s Easy Company, Futurebirds return with their sixth album and first double-length outing, Far Out Country. It reunites the alternative country-rock group with Easy Company producer Brad Cook as well as contributors like pedal steel guitarist (and former member) Dennis Love and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. As for the band proper, it features the lineup of Daniel Womack, Carter King, and Thomas Johnson — their three rotating singer/songwriters — along with the returning rhythm section of Brannen Miles and Tom Myers. Perhaps to a higher degree than on prior releases, it showcases the individual perspectives of each songwriter, with personal songs inspired by things like relationships, first-time…
Old Crow Medicine Show release their new record Union Made with Hartland Records via Firebird Music. The album finds the two-time Grammy-winning string band reflecting upon the people, places, and stories of a nation-state on the brink of its 250th birthday. It was inspired by the band’s nearly 30-year trek from the street corners of Western North Carolina to the nation’s most celebrated stages. They say the album is a love letter to the America that was, the America that is, and the America that could be. The band has spent more than a quarter century blending the vernacular traditions of old-school America, including mountain music, bluegrass, old-time, and folk, into modern songs that continue to resonate across generations and geographies.
Last year, the Red Clay Strays found themselves fully embraced by the country-music establishment, winning the CMA Award for Vocal Group of the Year. Chalk up their Nashville acceptance to the band’s Mobile, Alabama, roots, maybe, or the Southern drawl of chiseled lead singer Brandon Coleman. But on Grateful, the Strays’ third album, they reveal themselves to be not country’s next great group, but a bona fide rock & roll band. And a God-fearing one at that.
Reuniting with Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb, who oversaw the six-piece’s 2024 effort, Made by These Moments, the Strays deliver an urgent, timely record that stands toe to toe with anything coming out of the rock world. There are slippery slide-guitar jams about…
The ninth studio album from the alt-rock/folk outfit Deer Tick is inspired by their hometown of Providence, RI. The group dug into the city’s shady past and crafted musical tales based on gangsters, religion and the immigrant experience, as the wide-ranging record finds Deer Tick at their most creative. The band (singer/guitarist John McCauley, guitarist/singer Ian O’Neil, drummer/singer Dennis Ryan, and bassist Christopher Ryan) self-produced their album for the first time in their career, and that was key to the musical freedom found on Coin-O-Matic. The title itself comes from a cigarette-vending-machine company that served as the headquarters of Raymond Patriarca, a crime boss from Providence, setting the tone.
The stout “Dog Years” opens with acoustic…
There’s nothing more country than rebelling against country music. Willie Nelson did it. Waylon Jennings did it. And today’s country music is so easy to hate, whether it’s the AI artists flooding the genre, or a new song from Luke Bryan so brain-numbingly awful it gives you an ice cream headache. Still, bitching about country music doesn’t make you a country music outlaw like Nelson or Jennings. What makes you an outlaw is actually doing something about it. For Nashville country singer Nathan Evans Fox that means a host of rebellions, both small and large. On his new album Heirloom, Fox opens small with “Lots of Beginnings,” a heartfelt, moving letter to his newborn child, voicing worries about bullies and about forgetting the family’s rural roots,…
Words from Holy Gardens was already a very emotionally wrought record, featuring as it does Chip Taylor’s home recordings of his responses to aging and in particular to the death of his wife Joan, after more than sixty years of marriage. That already heavy atmosphere surrounding these new songs has become even more laden with emotional impact with the passing of Chip Taylor himself. It’s a combination of events that makes a traditional critical response to the music presented something of an irrelevance. This is a final statement of love, and a final musical statement as well. The recordings couldn’t be more intimate, as Taylor explained the process: “While I was taking care of her (and she was caring for me), I was often sitting at home with my guitar. I play…
Braxton Keith writes and sings about drinking, loving, losers, and other familiar classic country themes in a squeaky voice with a twang that sounds made for the juke box. He can convincingly act the fool and/or cry tears in his beer, depending on the song and the mood. The title of his new release, Real Damn Deal, suggests he’s the real deal, but his authenticity is purposely insincere. Keith understands the importance of a good façade. He understands there’s more truth in a good lie than in telling things straight.
The first-person narrators of his story songs claim to be patient, understanding, hurt, and ready for a good time, but their tales generally proclaim the opposite. Life’s funny that way. The man who brags, “I am running a few minutes…
On her latest effort, Villain Era, India Ramey digs deep into the past for influences and lands on an inspired mix of Wanda Jackson and Johnny Cash. To be fair, you’d be hard-pressed to find a cooler mix than the Queen of Rockabilly and the Man in Black for inspiration.
The album opener, “We Ride at Dawn,” starts things off strong with a clarion call for women to take action and is a song cloaked in a story about seeking revenge on bandits who came to town. Between the lines, however, it’s a song about women justifiably enraged and seeking revenge against men who strip them of their bodily autonomy. And it segues perfectly into the title track, with Ramey embracing her “villain era,” and opting out of being the perpetual…
Telecaster twang-master Bill Kirchen’s life template was stamped early when as a key member in the original Commander Cody & his Lost Planet Airmen outfit. For nearly a decade starting in 1967, Kirchen, Cody and an expansive, wildly talented lineup brought deep country, rockabilly, Western swing, and trucking songs, along with retro rock and roll to the young masses who might never have experienced this frantic music live. An early titled Hot Licks, Cold Steel & Truckers Favorites, describes their sound with typically wry humor.
The San Francisco-based group opened for many huge acts of the day including the Allman Brothers Band and the Grateful Dead, exposing their audiences to good time, bar band, retro-spirited rocking. “Hot Rod Lincoln,” their…