Listen to my favorite tracks off each album on my Spotify and 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.
Sloppy Scales — This Machine Mocks Fascists
Sloppy Scales wastes no mercy on those who are planning to plunge our country into chaos. The former radio clown tells it like it is on This Machine Mocks Fascists, enlisting some of the best musicians in Atlanta to fire their salvos. There’s no question that the musicianship is top-notch on Machine, but your mileage may vary with the lyrics. Humor is tough, and injecting that into songs runs the risk of transforming the whole production into a novelty. And, of course, some subjects are untouchable. (I, for one, find little humor in “I Shagged a MAGA,” about a Texan woman who can’t get an abortion after shacking up with a thoroughly unpleasant man.) Another tricky thing about humor is timing: these may have felt necessary, if not cathartic, to write and perform in the run-up to the election, but those jokes sure are landing differently now. For me, the jokes land best with the broad shots, like “Sweet Baby Jesus,” and the personal, like “Brown Clowns Need Not Apply.”
Carsie Blanton — After the Revolution
You know when you hear a great song and it feels a bit like falling head over heels in love for the first time? I was right there with Carsie Blanton’s After the Revolution. It came out in the spring and none of you told me about it, and I’m holding you all responsible for such a heinous act. After all, this is the kind of music Adobe & Teardrops was made for. Blanton shows us that the revolution doesn’t have to be fiery zeal: instead, it’s about holding out hope and taking it all in stride, even when things seem bleak. This is the revolution we need, and the spirit we must hold onto in the times ahead: find people (not someone) you love fiercely — people who will remind you that there is so, so much in this life that is worth holding onto and defending. And when we’ve won, someday, we will be able to live as free as Blanton does in the groovy second half of this astonishing album, one of the best of this year.
Dawn Landes — The Liberated Woman’s Songbook
This is another late (for me) entry into my top albums of 2024. Dawn Landes does something remarkable here in The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, a nod to the women’s music movement of the ’70s. Landes stretches back to the 1800s for songs of women’s lives — and their determination to change them. Landes and her band make all of those songs, no matter their original setting, of a piece: the laments of the 1800s to the anthems of the ’70s (thankfully, Landes adds some much needed polish to those songs.) Especially in light of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the march for personhood depicted in these songs feel especially poignant. This isn’t an account of frustrated dreams, though: rather it is one of unflagging faith.
Carolyn Kendrick — Each Machine
Carolyn Kendrick brings us a chilling and timely album, demonstrating how the fear of Satan has led us to the rise of Christian nationalism — all in time for Christmas. Each Machine is gorgeous, the culmination of Kendrick’s freelance journalistic research into Satanism — and the people who believe in it. Alongside Isa Burke, Kendrick assembled a collection of traditional and original folk songs that reckon with the almighty battle between good and evil — and, with interludes that include soundclips from the Satanic Panic all the way up to Trump’s first term, Kendrick shows us just how important these old songs are now. If the past was a time of poor people dying before their time, well…our world is still just as violent, if you do the hard work of peeling the layers away. Each Machine is urgent and necessary — one of the best albums this year.
Ben Chapman — Downbeat
They say to write what you know, and Downbeat reads like Ben Chapman’s tour diary. There’s the usual tropes of road songs: partying too hard, missing home, the dazzling adventures of new friends and lovers, the confusing alienation amidst the swirl of extroversion, and just wanting to be home with your special person. But few get it with the same swagger as Chapman. Anderson East’s New Orleans touch gives the album its name: both the emotional lows of a life where you’re always the stranger, as well as the groove inherent throughout. Rather than glorifying the rock’n’roll life, Downbeat shows us to treat that life like a precious dream — whether you’re on the stage or in the crowd.
You can check out tracks by these artists and more on the Adobe & Teardrops playlist — on Spotify and Tidal.