Listen to my favorite tracks off each album on my Spotify or Tidal playlists! Updated weekly with all the best new country, Americana, and whatever else I feel like — this is music like your life depends on it.
I know it’s hard to get into summer jams right now but I am STILL catching up on all the music that came out in 2023 (and 2022…) Hey — grad school and a honeymoon will do that to you. Before 2024 kicks off too much, I though I’d try to catch up on what I missed, and maybe encourage you to take a second look at something.
Margaret Glaspy — Echo the Diamond
To be honest, I haven’t followed Glaspy’s career too closely. But listening to some live cuts from Echo the Diamond on World Cafe made me take notice. As a woman who wears men’s clothing and got top surgery, I am not a fan of traditional femininity, but there is something so raw and powerful and self-assured as Glaspy rails against misogyny that can only be described as female. Not in the sense of social constructs, but in the sense of a quintessential generative force and reassuring power that all of us could tap into — if only we had the perceptiveness and self-awareness of Glaspy and others like her.
NQ Arbuckle — Love Songs for the Long Game
I have been waiting seven!!! Years!!! For a new NQ Arbuckle album and I was not disappointed. In fact, I was delighted to hear the band experiment with electronic elements, giving the album an almost new wave-meets-country feel. It’s not the warm blanket of The Future Happens Anyway, one of my all-time favorite albums in 10 years of music writing, but it is something else: a testament to holding true when the odds are against you. We just celebrated our one-year anniversary and navigated the choppy waters of the first year of marriage and have come out the other side even stronger than before. Love Songs is the album for that, the stark arrangements simulating the vulnerability necessary to make it work once the initial flush has faded.
Elana Low — Petrixora
Petrixora, the recent album from Elana Low, is a fascinating dive into almost medieval-sounding folk music. Armed with a harmonium, Low regales us with stories of heartbreak, yearning, and self-actualization. The drone of the harmonium gives these songs an otherworldly feel, casting Low’s profession as a sound healer in a new light. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the wall of sound, but Low’s piercing lyrics and fey performance keep us from falling too far under its spell.
Chapel Hart — Glory Days
Chapel Hart’s three-part harmony is something to behold; there’s a reason they got so far in America’s Got Talent, have already been nominated for several CMAs, and are in CMT’s Next Women of Country program. There’s a real joy in the performance of sisters Danica and Devyn Hart and their cousin Trea Swindle. Glory Days is a solid mainstream country album, with your requisite party songs (“Dear Tequila”), profession of blue collar pride (“This Girl Likes Fords”), and establishing bona fides (“Redneck Fairytale.”) The trio feels at its most genuine when focusing on their family: “Home Is Where the Hart Is” a sincere and touching dedication to Chapel Hart’s community, and “Fam Damily” is a hilarious exploration of those dynamics.
Ben de la Cour — Sweet Anhedonia
Ben de la Cour puts the “American” and “gothic” in “American gothic” on Sweet Anhedonia. Okay, so it didn’t come out in the summer but I’m working my way through a literal two-year backlog, champs. De la Cour paints chilling images of the grim realities of backroads America, each song more of a bummer than the last. Don’t look away, though: De la Cour is one of the finest songwriters I’ve had the pleasure to write about, and Sweet Anhedonia offers some heart in the bleakness — if you dig real hard.
You can check out tracks by these artists and more on the Adobe & Teardrops playlist — on Spotify or Tidal.