Hey, gang. I got a little tied up with finals and never made a December episode for Adobe & Teardrops. That’s embarrassing, because December 8th is Adobe & Teardrops’ tenth anniversary! I begin with a an all-time top 10 countdown for the last 10 years of Adobe & Teardrops.
Then, at the 42-minute mark, I do my top 10 of 2021. See below for time stamps.Also! I am fundraising for Never Again Action, a Jewish-led immigrant rights group. For every $100 we raise, I release a new song. Check out the videos that have already been posted and the donation link here.
Before I begin, thank you so much for supporting Adobe & Teardrops for all these years. I wouldn’t do if it wasn’t for you.
(3:46) 2011 – John Moreland – “Low” (Everything the Hard Way) – You can see the beginning of his acoustic, stream-of-consciousness writing with “Gods.” With its themes of the futility of chasing rock’n’roll dreams, it makes sense that this Moreland’s final (for now) punk/Heartland rock album. While Moreland has revived his rock chops with Big Bad Luv, he and collaborator John Calvin Abney have begun to explore the stratosphere in LP5 in reqarding ways. Still, the tight structures and deliberate writing of Everything the Hard Way remains the most impactful for me in his last 10 years of work.
(6:10) 2012 – The Sparklers – “Gunfire and Confetti” (Crying at the Low Bar) – Having this one on the Adobe & Teardrops’ all-time top 10 is a no-brainer. The hard part was picking only one song from the album to represent it. This album nurtured my heart through many a breakup and lonely bachelorhood in between relationships that were doomed to fail. Not a single note is out of place. The Sparklers’ power pop is gorgeous, heartbreaking, distant, perfect.
(9:19) 2013 – Two Cow Garage – “Stars & Gutters” (Death of the Self-Preservation Society) — It would not be possible to make a list like this and not include Two Cow Garage. Micah and Shane elucidate the corners of my soul better than I ever could.
(11:36) 2014 – N.Q. Arbuckle – “Hospitals” (The Future Happens Anyway) — While TCG holds a special place in my heart, this is the album I go to for soul medicine. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because it’s bleak as hell. I’ve been waiting on pins and needles for the next NQ Arbuckle release, which should be any minute now. Joy, despair, and resolve: it’s all in this album.
(15:00) 2015 – Norma MacDonald – “Blue As a Jay” (Burn the Tapes)— Between NQ Arbuckle and Norma MacDonald, my passion for Canadicana was sealed. If nothing else, Adobe & Teardrops has been an outlet for my low-grade depression and “Blue As a Jay” was an anthem of sorts for me for several years. I’m glad I don’t feel this way now, but I know I have felt, and will feel, seen when I need to be.
(20:47) 2016 – Anna Tivel – “Black Balloon” (Heroes Waking Up) – Something about this album caught me at exactly the right time and it has held me in its sway every since. Tivel’s hushed deliveries and disciplined storytelling create worlds that are as ominous as they are magical, asking us to consider those who are down and out and what they could bring to the table if we let them.
(25:23) 2017 – Karen and the Sorrows – “The Price of the Ticket” (The Narrow Place) – There’s probably no other artist I’ve spent more time writing about and I’m so glad Karen doesn’t think it’s creepy. Karen’s organizing efforts have created the network of queer country musicians we all know and love today. As the band name suggestions, Karen’s repertoire is full of breakup ballads (it’s a good thing she’ll hopefully be playing at our wedding!) but “The Price of the Ticket,” to me, encapsulates her political work as an anti-racist queer Jewish organizer. (PS, you can hear Karen’s brand new song here and read her essay about her vision for the queer country community in Rainbow Rodeo.)
(29:46) 2018 – Mariel Buckley – “I Wonder” (Driving in the Dark) – When I first started dating my fiancee, I wrote that if this album was a person I’d leave her for it – I just felt it understood me so much. Buckley’s career is poised to take off like a rocket – if only COVID would just fucking go away. In the meantime, “I Wonder”’s optimistic outlook in the face of homophobia and violence is my touchstone to get me through.
(33:08) 2019 – Jason Hawk Harris – “Giving In” (Love & The Dark) – Hawk Harris’s debut solo album Love & The Dark, is absolutely stunning. It finds Harris at a moment where he’s wrestling with a truly Job-ian lot: getting sober, settling down, the death of his mother. If squeezing those coals into lyrical diamonds wasn’t enough of a feat, Harris and his band delivery scorching-hot country fire and fury, giving the songs an accessible entryway into some of the most unimaginable pain any one person can go through.
(37:19) 2020 – Stephanie Lambring – “Daddy’s Disappointment” (Autonomy) – If you haven’t had a chance to listen to Lambring’s debut yet, put Autonomy on your to-do list. Lambring’s fiercely feminist album tackles all the things we’re scared to discuss: body image, abusive relationships, growing up queer in the Bible Belt – all done with an intensity of purpose that makes us all know that Lambring, after much searching, is exactly where she’s supposed to be.
(42:07) Alright alright! Now let’s get into this year! In another ten years, one of these will make the all-time 20!
(44:36) Doc Feldman – “Let Me Love You” (A Healthy Dose of Anxiety)
Also a contender for the all-time Adobe & Teardrops top 10, I just love Feldman’s bleak warmth. On A Healthy Dose of Anxiety, Feldman offers a big scoop of ‘70s country groove, giving his spare songs a sense of swagger and humor as Rome burns.
(50:53) Maia Sharp – “When the World Doesn’t End” (Mercy Rising)
Warm, intimate, daring, smoky. Sharp brings a relentlessly exploratory approach to her country music, calling to mind the anti-folk of the nineties. Sharp’s songwriting brings us right into the middle of her characters’ interactions; you can practically feel their breath on your skin.
(55:15) Ben Trickey — “Glendalough or Chantilly” (We Are Not Lucky We Are Blessed)
As always, I’m blown away by Trickey’s epic, apocalyptic arrangements and tremulous delivery. (Trickey’s 2013 album Rising Waters was on my short-list for the Adobe & Teardrops all-time top 10.) Trickey brings a sense of fragility to Southern gothic, reminiscent of Jason Molina.
(1:01:01) Adeem the Artist — “Fervent For the Hunger” (Cast Iron Pansexual)
Adeem’s got a bombastic online presence and an incredible sense of humor. A stint working as the in-house guitar player for a cruise line will do that to you. This past year has been like a rocket ship for ol’ Deemy – they opened for American Aquarium and I’m hoping that 2022 brings even more incredible opportunities. As uproarious as many of the songs on Cast Iron Pansexual are, I love how Adeem can distill so many beautiful, complex ideas into a few verses.
(1:04:41) Semler — “Prodigal Girl” (Late Bloomer)
Grace Baldridge (aka Semler) is another one with a one-two punch of a year. Baldridge released her diaristic accounts of growing up queer and Christian on Preacher’s Kid earlier this year, then followed it up with the polished Late Bloomer. If Preacher’s Kid focused on youth groups and young crushes, Late Bloomer shows us a path towards coming to terms with life as a queer adult – no matter what flavor of homophobia you grew up with.
(1:07:40) Valerie June – “Why the Bright Stars Glow” (The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers)
Witnessing Valerie June’s performance at Newport Folk Fest a few years ago is one of my top ten live music experiences. Her album, The Moon and the Stars, eloquently captures June’s joie de vivre and radical acceptance. Arriving in spring 2021, the album dominated the Americana charts for weeks. No reason to wonder why – June’s mysticism is tempered by complex but disciplined layers of loops that carry us through a deep exploration of what it means to be human.
(1:13:00) Miko Marks – “Long As I Can See The Light” (Race Records)
Despite everything else, 2021 was Miko Marks’ year – and it was well-deserved. On her EP, which I raved about in No Depression, Marks intentionally blurs the lines of gospel, rock, funk, and soul as a jubilant protest against the music industry’s history of racist marketing. Marks brings a special fire to each of these songs, a rousing reminder that politics don’t have to be serious, and joy doesn’t have to be vapid or fleeting.
(1:16:40) Margo Cilker – “Kevin Johnson” (Pohorylle)
This one slipped totally under my radar until about two weeks ago, and it’s been on non-stop since. Cilker’s got the perfect country music voice: brassy, smooth, full of humor – even on the sad songs. It helps in my book that Cilker brings a rock’n’roll edge to her sound, though the album itself is as country as it gets.
(1:20:01) No-No Boy – “Where the Sand Creek Meets the Arkansas River” (1975)
Julian Saporiti’s concept album about his family’s history becomes a sweeping narrative of the history of Asian Americans in this country. It’s not a happy story. But Saporiti finds joy as much as pain and anguish in stories of Japanese concentration camps in World War II to his mother’s memories of Hanoi before the Vietnam War. 1975 is a masterful album, utilizing roots music to emphatically prove the place Asian Americans have earned in America.
(1:27:38) Aaron Vance – “Five Bucks Says” (Cabin Fever)
I’m beginning to worry that Aaron Vance thinks I’m stalking him, but in a crowded field, Cabin Fever really is my favorite album this year. It’s the perfect marriage of pop country and honky-tonk, serious racial commentary and blue-collar shenanigans, the swagger of rap and the gentle goading of classic country music. Not only is Vance an excellent songwriter and performer, this album is proof of concept that in spite of all the internal feuding about what is and isn’t “country” – and who belongs in the genre – if you do it all exceptionally well, there’s no argument to be had.
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