Here’s some the best Americana and roots-type music releases for May 10th, 2024. 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.
Pokey LaFarge
Rhumba Country (New West Records)
Pokey LaFarge displays such easy grace when he sings that it’s tempting to consider him a supplier of light entertainment. Don’t believe it. The stirring, deceptively fraught Rhumba Country presents vivid vignettes of restless hearts gripped by desire and loneliness, and yearning for higher ground. If this smooth troubadour ultimately strikes a positive note, his progress is hard-earned. Likewise, lazy listeners might tag him as a source of the kind of cartoonish, old-timey Americana worthy of a theme park attraction, which is also wrong. An heir to the similarly underestimated Leon Redbone and Dan Hicks, LaFarge deftly intertwines reggae, country, soul, gospel, and what have you to fashion an instantly familiar, yet curiously fresh, sound. (edited from No Depression review)
Kelsey Waldon
There’s Always a Song (Oh Boy Records)
“I have been inspired by all kinds of music spanning many genres, but there is something about old time songs & bluegrass music that resonates so deeply within me. It’s like, I kind of was able to find my voice through these voices, you know?” Waldon says. “A part of me doing this album is expressing so much gratitude for the music that I love, for music that has meant a lot to me and helped me.” Across four albums full of both “heavy twang and spitfire pedal steel” and “coffeehouse confessionals” (Rolling Stone), she’s brought listeners into her world and shared her own experiences and perspectives. Her new project, There’s Always a Song, however, is about the “singular voices” that shaped her into the artist she is today. “These songs are deep. They were here long before me, and they will be here long after I’m gone, after any of us are here. They will survive the test of time,” Waldon says. “It’s like they live in some kind of universe that just survives forever. These songs know the secrets to life.” Guests include Margo Price, Amanda Shires, S.G. Goodman and more. (from label’s press release)
Also new this week…
Wade Bowen – Flyin’ (Bowen Sounds)
Jared Deck – Head Above Water (independent)
Rick Estrin & The Nightcats – The Hits Keep Coming (Alligator Records)
Greensky Bluegrass – The Iceland Sessions (Big Blue Zoo Records)
Anya Hinkle – Oceana (Red Parlor Records) +
Grant Langston – aLAbama (independent) +
Abigail Lapell – Anniversary (Outside Music)
MorningBird – Echoes In The Meadow (MorningBird Records) +
Orville Peck – Stampede Vol. 1 (Warner Bros Records)
RubyJoyful – The Pie Chart Of Love (independent) +
Shannon & The Clams – The Moon Is In The Wrong Place (Easy Eye Sound)
John Shipe – Water This Dark (Involushun Records)
Coming out soon … Little Feat, Tim Easton, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Curtis McMurtry, Ruth Moody, David Myles, Anna Tivel, Kaia Kater, Richard Thompson, Kim Richey, Jim Keller, Willie Nelson, Ana Egge, Swamp Dogg, Yarn, Jesse Dayton, Silverada, The Mavericks, Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, Laurie Lewis, Jesse Daniel, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Mellissa Carper and more!
