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.
Micah Schnabel — The Clown Watches the Clock
None of the albums featured this week are new — but I held on to all of these reviews in part because I simply didn’t have the time, but also because I wanted to group this cohort of artists who have all been each other’s orbits. After all, these artists are some of the reasons I began Adobe & Teardrops to begin with.
Micah Schnabel, is, of course, one of my all-time favorites and The Clown Watches the Clock finds him with a strident confidence I didn’t feel in his last few releases. He’s also angrier and more defiant than ever. After all, what’s more punk than saying “you’re holding me down but I can still spit in your face?” Clown is blistering and unsparing, unashamed to discuss the humiliation of poverty that tortured artists only glamorize if they’ve never had to live it. Schnabel won’t let you look away, but we can celebrate the everyday courage it takes to survive when the odds are stacked so highly.
Todd Farrell Jr — Might as Well be Ghosts
I wish I could tell you how many times I’ve thought about packing up Adobe & Teardrops, especially in the last few years, especially now that my career requires me to take on more responsibilities and I have less time to write. There’s a sense that maybe you’re just shouting into the void and nobody cares. There’s also the inescapable truth of the love of the game. And who would I be if I wasn’t writing about music?
Todd Farrell Jr gets all of that on Might As Well Be Ghosts, his best album to date in a string of gobsmackers. Farrell has a knack for getting at the emotional core of a scenario with blunt honesty, grace, and a stubborn optimism that things may suck now but there’s a chance that could change someday. Ghosts refuses to consider any aspect of life a waste of time, and takes pleasure in the paths less traveled, and the hold music has on us all.
(Also, I’ll be unveiling a new iteration of Adobe & Teardrops shortly.)
Frank Turner — Undefeated
Frank Turner played a key role on The Clown Watches the Clock, but even though Turner, Farrell, and Schnabel share a musical core, it’s still a bit jarring to see how…glossy…Turner’s music has become. (I know Von and I have joked about this on the podcast in the past.) But no amount of LA engineering can smooth over Turner’s sincerity. Turner responds to those allegations with “No Thank You For the Music,” a clever rebuke of what it means to be punk rock. On the other hand, there are poignant examinations of the past, a reckoning of where one stands now in a more comfortable middle age than Turner ever imagined for himself on “Letters” and “East Finchley.” But the gloss works against him on songs like “The Leaders,” which sound like if Raffi covered the clash. All in all, it’s in the same vein as Turner’s more recent works: grappling with success while honoring the scrappy world he came from.
Beau Jennings and the Tigers — American Stories Major Chords
Beau Jennings and the Tigers keep it simple on American Stories and Major Chords. Part of the same Tulsa scene that nurtured John Calvin Abney (below), John Moreland, and, to a certain extent, Two Cow Garage, Jennings delivers sublime, no-frills singer-songwriter tales. On American Stories, we see Beau Jennings looking up and realizing that he’s survived. Much like the other albums on this week’s playlist, this is one that surveys all the sacrifices we make when we commit ourselves to our calling — wondering if it was all worth it, wondering when it’s time to give up, doing it all over again in the morning…and finding satisfaction in sticking with it for as long as we do.
John Calvin Abney — Shortwaving
In his last few outings, John Calvin Abney has brought us to vast new solar systems of cosmic music, but Shortwaving is a return to earth of sorts. On this EP, Abney vents the exhaustion and disappointment of long treks away from home and severed connections. He shares some of the personnel from The Clown Watches the Clock: Lydia Loveless on backing vocals and Todd May on guitars. They contribute a heaviness to this album that is one half blues and one half meditative jam. Shortwaving is world-weary but beautiful: no matter how many punches Abney takes, there is still a sense of wonder about the twists and turns of the journey.
You can check out tracks by these artists and more on the Adobe & Teardrops playlist — on Spotify and Tidal.