Here’s some the best Americana and roots-type music releases for July 29th, 2022. Click the artist or album links to find out more. The artist’s names link to their websites and the CD title links go to either Amazon, iTunes, Bandcamp or the artist’s site for ordering or downloading. A + sign means although not a featured release, it’s a notable album that’s still worth checking out. Also, this page will be updated as I find out about other new releases so check back again.
Andrew Duhon
Emerald Blue (Verve Records)
Andrew Duhon’s Emerald Blue is effortless. Perhaps taking a note from his hometown, New Orleans, he casually glides through his songs. Whether Duhon is musing on the delicious loneliness of life on the road or celebrating the transcendent moments found in daily life, there’s an easygoing nature throughout Emerald Blue that reminds us that life should be taken in stride. While Emerald Blue is easy to listen to, it’s not all driving down the highway with the windows down. On “Everybody Colored Their Own Jesus,” Duhon takes asks why it’s so hard to achieve acceptance and, more importantly, to celebrate our differences. By using the metaphor of children coloring with crayons. Ultimately, Duhon reminds us that everything comes in its time: adventure, loneliness, tragedy and — yes, even if it’s fleeting — contentment. (edited from No Depression review)
Josh Rouse
Going Places (Yep Roc Records)
Across more than a dozen albums going back to 1998, Josh Rouse has managed to cobble together a satisfying blend of folk and Americana with strong pop elements. His latest though, Going Places, still uses that established musical template as a starting point, but is much more relaxed affair. Written when he was forced off the road due to the pandemic, he retreated with his family to Spain with plenty of time on his hands. Missing out on performing, he pulled together his Spanish band and started playing regularly in a friend’s bar. The mix of songs that sound like they’re being written on the spot sitting on a stool in a bar, with tracks that are a bit more polished and contain several musical layers makes for a compelling listen. (edited from Glide Magazine review)
Amanda Shires
Take It Like A Man (ATO Records)
Plenty of musicians take great pains to create distance between their lyrics and their personal lives. Amanda Shires is not one of them. “Everything on the record is autobiographical. I didn’t hold anything back,” Shires said. That’s tricky enough for someone who lives a fairly public life in her own right. Add in that Shires is married to someone who’s also famous (that would be Jason Isbell), that the bulk of these songs trace the bumpy contours of their marriage and that he plays guitar on seven of them, and you can’t help but wonder if their bond is uncommonly resilient, or whether this year’s family vacation is still on.Musically, these songs are often terse and filled with tension that emerges in squiggles of violin on the title track; dark, minor-key piano and a slow-motion wave of overdriven electric guitar on “Fault Lines”. Take It Like a Man is Shires’ first album in a while that feels fully self-contained, as if she decided that the only person she needs to impress with these songs is herself. By removing herself from competition with anyone else, Shires emerges as a clear winner. (edited from Paste Magazine review)
Also new this week…
The Brothers Comatose – Turning Up the Ground (Swamp Jam Records) +
Wyatt Easterling – From Where I Stand (Phoenix Rising Records) +
Fantastic Cat – The Very Best of Fantastic Cat (Blue Rose Music)
King Johnson – Luck So Strange (Landslide Records)
Whiskey Myers – Tornillo (Wiggy Thump Records
Nick Nace – The Harder Stuff (self-released) +
Tom Paxton, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer – All New (Community Music)
Coming out in the next few weeks… The Old North, The Bacon Brothers, Cahalan Morrison, The Brother Brothers, Early James, Kelsey Waldon, Loudon Wainwright III, Will Hoge, Watkins Family Hour, Jim Lauderdale, Dan Navarro, Charley Crockett, Sunny Sweeney, Kenny Roby and more …
