When you strip it all down to bare essentials, you get Jamie Stillway’s Lullaby For a Stranger. The instrumental album has a sense of intimate warmth that is gamely striving to stave away coldness and alienation. Considering Stillway wrote and…
Bo Armstrong keeps it simple and true on his new album If your tired heart is aching… Armstrong’s sensitive, straightforward Americana is arresting. With his warm voice at the center of each composition, Armstrong’s tales of exhaustion and optimism carry…
Trust me, I’ve had a lot of amazing, incredible things happen this year. And somehow, lately, I just want to curl up with music that focuses on licking your wounds. Shirley Hurt’s self-titled album provides a good soundtrack for that.…
There’s nothing like a well-suited collaboration. Sarah Lee Langford released one of my favorite albums of 2019, Two-hearted Rounder. Its moody atmosphere serves as a neat counterweight to Will Stewart’s breezy Slow Life, which came out earlier this year. The…
Angela Easterling’s new album, Witness is a triumph of songwriting. Easterling masterfully ducks in and out of the best subgenres Americana has to offer while holding on to one important kernel: radical vulnerability. Whether she’s slinging skronky blues or heartfelt…