Who are these people who say that there’s no great music being released anymore - you know, not like when they were young? Maybe they’re just online trolls, but in any event, they couldn’t be more out of touch. We’re in a golden age of music making, and 2024 was another year to prove it. While the quantity of new roots music can be intimidating, the quality is widely distributed across many regions, styles and subgenres. Helping you know where you might listen and learn is the purpose of this - my ninth annual Essential and Outstanding Americana Albums list, which I’m proud to share with you.
What stands out to me about this year is the bounty of keepsake albums from women, who make up well over half this list. Leading lights in our field - Shelby Lynne, Sierra Ferrell, Kacey Musgraves, Maggie Rose, Aoife O’Donovan, and Katie Pruitt - either followed up important projects with even more potency or tried something new. I also have included some exceptional talents who are in the building/emerging stages of their careers, such as ISMAY from California and Stephanie Lambring and Kyshona from here in Music City. Meanwhile, innovators like Yasmin Williams and the American Patchwork Quartet with Indian-born singer Falu Shah are taking roots music in exciting new directions.
As ever, please note that I curate this list based not only on my feelings about the music’s intrinsic quality, but also on reception by the Americana community and news impact. As I like to say, these are the records I’d give as gifts and that I think will remain relevant in the decades to come. And this just gets us started with our year-end coverage. WMOT will play songs from our 89 and a half most-played artists of 2024 starting on Dec. 27. And next week I’ll offer the Old Fashioned Dozen, a list of albums that Amy Alvey and I found most compelling in our weekly efforts curating The Old Fashioned. Now, let’s dive in.
Artists I covered or interviewed this year are linked.
Shelby Lynne - Consequences of the Crown
When she accepted her Americana Lifetime Achievement Award in September, Shelby Lynne said “I feel like if I was ever to fit anywhere, it was with misfits and the storytellers and the outlaws, and the truth tellers, the heartbreakers, the hippies.” That does reasonably describe the cadre of collaborators she found herself hanging out with upon moving back to Nashville after decades in Los Angeles. Ashley Monroe is “Hippie Annie” in the Pistol Annies after all, while Angaleena Presley (“Holler Annie”) is a gifted narrative songwriter. Karen Fairchild is a dynamo performer who knows a hit from her years with Little Big Town. This unlikely team wrote and produced exactly the album that 55-year-old Lynne needed to make at this point in her iconoclastic, anti-storybook career. Crown stares down a busted relationship and embraces self-aware sobriety with lean boombox beats, austere R&B atmosphere, and profound artistic bravery. Lynne’s celebrated voice stands naked and proud on the serene “Butterfly” and the vulnerable “Shattered.” The excellent “Over And Over” brings classic Stax ambience with horns and harmony vocals. She’s not been out of touch, having released albums in 2020 and 2021, but this one’s a career statement.
Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood
Alabama songwriter/indie rocker Katie Crutchfield steered her Waxahatchee pickup truck in a rustic and rootsy direction with her edgy 2020 album Saint Cloud and followed that up with Plains, an under-rated country rock collaboration with Jess Williamson, whose lone album I Walked With You A Ways was among the very best records of 2022. On Tigers Blood, she splits the difference between those projects, holding on to some of the latter’s Chicks-y pop brightness, bolstered by waves of the elegantly provocative lyrics for which Cruchfield is famous. Americana Award nominated single “Right Back To It” luxuriates in the comforts (and anxieties) of a strong, long-term relationship. “Bored” pairs some bopping 80s college rock texture with a hopscotch lattice of wordplay. The opus earned Waxahatchee her first Grammy nomination - for Best Americana Album.
Sierra Ferrell - Trail Of Flowers
In Americana music, where artists often dress down and treat the stage as an extension of their home or favorite bar, Sierra Ferrell is a certified bohemian showperson. Her quirky flair for dress-up and design could be a strike against her if she weren’t so magical as a songwriter and singer. Her risk-taking thus looks inspired instead of awkward. Her debut Long Time Coming was a shoe-in for a top spot in 2021, and Trail Of Flowers maintains her momentum as one of the most important country artists of this decade. The variety here extends from the pastoral, multi-nominated song “American Dreaming” to the unhurried, Willie-style country of “Dollar Bill Bar,” to the singalong folk atmosphere of “Lighthouse.” I saw Ferrell twice this year - in an intimate showroom and a major festival stage, and she owned both situations with her animated, artful voice. She won the biggest Americana Awards this fall and is up for four Grammy Awards, including Best Americana Album. If anyone in our field is essential, she is.
Fruition - How To Make Mistakes
Over 15 years, Portland, OR’s Fruition has built on its acoustic busking origins, growing as musicians and becoming ever closer as a “family” whose harmony singing now feels born of blood. The quintet nails all the fundamentals of bandcraft - striking melodies, thoughtful arrangements, expert ensemble picking with just enough jamming, and above all, timeless songs that feel like classics. Even with three singers and songwriters contributing leads, their esthetic is refined, cohesive, and self-assured in a way that reminds me of the Jayhawks and the great supergroup the Continental Drifters. On their latest, Fruition tried something novel and bold, a 13-song set recorded live from the studio floor, with no fixes. Nothing needs fixing. It’s rambling, passionate folk rock perfection.
Aoife O’Donovan - All My Friends
As a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and the wife of Eric Jacobsen, a symphonic conductor and cellist based in Florida, Aoife O’Donovan has always been a folk singer inclined toward orchestral thinking and high concept projects. This edifying and beautiful song cycle, made possible by a FreshGrass grant, gets inside the story of Women’s Suffrage through the writings of pioneer Carrie Chapman Catt. And it arrived at a perilous time when major candidates openly flirt with repealing the 19th Amendment. By adding rich orchestration (conducted by Jacobsen) and all-star guests to Aoife’s singularly creamy voice, they produced a landmark in the story of progressive string band folk. To extend the project, O’Donovan recorded some of these songs with Nashville’s brilliant string band Hawktail, which she released in August.
Billy Strings - Highway Prayers
I know first hand the thrill of being young and turned on by world class bluegrass that drives like rock and roll. My generation had the collective of Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan and Tony Rice on lead guitar and vocals. Thousands of new fans are getting indoctrinated these days by Billy Strings and his amazing band as they take bluegrass to scale without compromise. This shows on his jumbo sized, 20-song collection Highway Prayers. The singles “Leadfoot” and “Catch And Release” felt like novelties when they emerged early, and I prepared to be underwhelmed. But when I heard the opening sequence of “Leaning On A Travelin’ Song,” “In The Clear,” and “Escanaba,” I knew were were in for something. The latter is one of several tunes that evoke David “Dawg” Grisman and the West Coast string band renaissance. “Don’t Be Calling Me (at 4AM)” is an ace country grass song, partly because it’s co-written with Shawn Camp. “Malfunction Junction” is jamgrass gold. I tend to skip a few of the lighter weight bong songs, but overall I think even Mr. Bill Monroe would think it ‘mighty fine.’
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - Woodland
The greatest albums mingle excellence in composing, performing, and producing with a sense of story and place. And they’ll be telling the story of this one long after we’re gone. Since the game-changing debut Revival in 1996, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have been Americana standard setters. Then they gave Nashville’s legacy a huge gift by buying and occupying East Nashville’s historic Woodland Studios, taking care of it even through significant tornado damage in 2020. In the same rooms where the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band made Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Welch and Rawlings wrote, rehearsed, and thought about things for more than 20 years. Only now have they invited us in and infused the Woodland aura (and its glorious 1960s signage) into a vinyl-worthy work of art that builds on their classically spare sound. They’ve recorded with drums before, but the beats sound surprising as they elevate the striking imagery of opener “Empty Trainload of Sky.” On the moving “Hashtag,” which reflects on the passing of a friend and fellow artist, judicious use of strings show that as much as they’ve refined their sound, Gil and Dave are up for (subtly) new frontiers.
Sarah Jarosz - Polaroid Lovers
If any roots/folk star out there has earned the space to snap up her songwriting with spicy beats and pop textures, it’s Texas native Sarah Jarosz. Since her late teens when she broke out on Sugar Hill Records with talent scout and producer Gary Pacosza, she’s set an award-winning standard for her sublime voice, astute songwriting, and top tier acoustic musicianship. Here she works with Golden Hour producer Daniel Tashian, Nashville’s indie pop master, so how could it not result in delicious listening? The Grammy nominated “Jealous Moon” leads off with a liberated 90s rock pulse and janglecrunch guitars, even as Jarosz borrows from bluegrass for its long-lined chorus. Others, such as “Runaway Train,” sound like Patty Loveless at her peak. Though it’s in a modern vibe, we get to hear Sarah get into some tasty mandola picking in “Take The High Road.” I’ll always love Jarosz most in string band and folk settings, but like Alison Krauss before her, it would be petty and pointless to expect this artist to not try any sound she’s hearing.
Stephanie Lambring - Hypocrite
Stylistically unbounded and blessed with production wisdom that measures up to her famous songwriting skills, Stephanie Lambring is one Nashville’s edge-of-Americana creative treasures. After bailing out on a publishing deal that put her vision in tension with Music Row’s needs, Lambring found her voice with 2020’s Autonomy. On Hypocrite, she’s especially mind-expanding and moving when she’s laying bare the social and political constructs that shape women’s lives, especially how they present to the world and what they do and don’t get rewarded for. It opens in that vein with “Cover Girl,” about conformity and fulfillment, while a bit later, “Filler” stopped me cold with its acerbic wordplay about women filling holes in their self-worth through products for their skin. “Purity Ring” and “Hospital Parking” are clinics in effective, economical use of language about difficult subjects. Lambring had to be coaxed back into songwriting during the pandemic, and we’re all better off for it.
Maggie Rose - No One Gets Out Alive
Over a trio of albums, Nashville indie star and powerhouse vocalist Maggie Rose emancipated herself from the radio country game and developed a broadly appealing fusion of soul, country rock, and jamband joy. As good as 2022’s Have A Seat was, NOGOA ups the ante with rapturous orchestration complimenting a crack studio ensemble featuring keyboardists Peter Levin and Kaitlyn Connor and guitarist Sadler Vaden. She out-sings a 60-piece orchestra in the opening title track and then treats us to a varied yet cohesive set of songs that had me changing favorites for much of the year. “Fake Flowers” is a powerhouse kiss-off. “Under The Sun” chills out the energy. “Mad Love” brings a cinematic lushness in a minor key. The piano driven “Another Sad Song” makes for an elegant closer. This is one to watch in the Grammy Americana Album category on Feb. 2.
T Bone Burnett - The Other Side
A funny thing happened to T Bone Burnett on his way to finishing his career-capping Invisible Light trilogy, a project whose first two volumes appeared in 2019 and 2022. He wrote a batch of songs that felt connected and important, so The Other Side emerged in April. I’d expect to like the trilogy more because those have drums by Jay Bellerose and all kinds of sonic painting. But this LP is more focused and less artsy, truly one of Burnett’s best solo albums, which is saying something for this 76-year-old titan of and spokesman for American roots music. Opener “He Came Down” continues Burnett’s long and astute fascination with Jesus, while the rest feel like songs about love and other human needs. I’m thrilled that he cut “(I’m Gonna Get Over This) Some Day” with Rosanne Cash, a song he wrote but that had only emerged as played by protegé Logan Ledger. Harmonious group Lucius lends their voices, especially sweetly on “The Pain Of Love.” I’m sure Burnett has urged his production clients to keep it simple and direct, and here’s he’s brought on board bass player Dennis Crouch and guitarist Colin Linden to manifest that advice.
Caleb Klauder & Reeb Willms - Gold In Your Pocket
The early days of alt-country and Americana were full of throwback artists who mined the emotional transparency and exposed instrumental art of old-time country music. Gold satisfies that craving at a time when such albums are harder to find. Caleb and Reeb, the first couple of Pacific Northwest hillbilly tunes and the core of the hot old-time Foghorn String Band, cut this one at Nashville’s Tractor Shed and at Joel Savoy’s place in Eunice, LA, and they blend the artisanal spirit of both places across 13 tracks. Willms is new to songwriting, but her lovely “Same Little Heart” introduces herself with scenes from her Washington state youth and a moving homespun voice. Klauder says while they cover a few contemporary songwriters (including the melancholy waltz “Last Of My Kind” by Paul Burch), he wrote most of these classic sounding cuts. This hearty, tuneful record adds a rich and swinging opus to their catalog and to our shared roots heritage.
Jontavious Willis - West Georgia Blues
More than ever, traditional blues is a robust part of Americana, and this year saw quality releases by Cedric Burnside, Jerron Paxton, and Justin Golden. The one that kept me coming back for its variety and quality of picking and singing was Jontavious Willis’s third album, a self-produced set of 15 original songs that embodies the best of not just blues but regional roots music at large. The title nods to Willis’s beloved and multi-generational hometown of Greenville. “My folks been right here since 1823,” he sings in the a capella, ensemble opening title cut. “This is my motherland, and it sure is home to me.” We hear the first of his fingerstyle guitar songs with “Charlie Brown Blues,” but it’s not all 12-bar moaners as we go along. “Keep Your Worries On The Dance Floor” comes off like a nice Georgia beach music shag. “Lula Mae” brings in boogie piano, thumping string bass and dirty electric guitar. “A Lift Is All I Need” swings like it’s 2 am in 1956. It’s all great, right through the hot juke joint instrumental that closes out this impressively assembled collection.
Gaby Moreno - Dusk
For years out in Los Angeles, Guatemala-born singer Gaby Moreno has been prolific - as part of the Watkins Family Hour collective, making records (and winning Grammy Awards) with the likes of Van Dyke Parks, collaborating with Calexico, and blowing away some of the most discerning and important figures in the music business with her versatile, emotional voice. It took an invitation to Americanafest 2024 to get her fully on my radar and the discovery was profound. Her catalog of self-penned albums is extraordinary, and her current album Dusk is too. Working with Nashville producer Dan Knobler mostly in a Los Angeles studio, she crafts a journey of an album with a risky buffet of genres, from the noir Latin of “New Dawn” to the spare and lovely “Rainy Season” to a juking, spontaneous take on Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” that is among my favorite tracks of 2024. We need more Latin Americana in our lives, and Moreno is pointing the way.
Yasmin Williams - Acadia
I like to hold space on this list for instrumental music, because it’s a valuable part of many roots lineages, and few are caretaking the John Fahey/Leo Kottke strain of American music like Yasmin Williams. The Virginia native has embraced a range of stringed instruments and playing styles, including overhand tapping on lap-cradled guitars. Her composing and graceful execution have been widely hailed since she made her first album as a precocious, independent teenager. With Acadia, she joins the illustrious roster of Nonesuch Records and collaborates with fellow masters Aoife O’Donovan, Kaki King (a sister in fingerstyle guitar innovation), Darlingside, and the fiddle/banjo duo of Allison DeGroot and Tatiana Hargreaves. The vocalists mostly sing wordlessly, telling stories with only sound, something Williams keenly understands. The nine tracks lean way more toward floaty dreamscapes than blues dances, but there’s no shortage of old soul behind this beauty.
Kaitlin Butts - Roadrunner!
In a crowded alt-country field, Kaitlin Butts has kept herself in the vanguard and the spotlight for all the right reasons - snappy writing that evokes The Chicks and Miranda Lambert, western wit and style, and an infectious personality. In the case of her 2024 release, we can add thinking big to the list. Roadrunner! is an answer/companion/homage album to the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic Oklahoma!, which was a big deal for Kaitlin as she grew up in Tulsa, obsessed with musical theater. Some of these 17 tracks were songs she had in her work files that reminded her of scenes from her favorite musical. Some were written through direct inspiration from the 1955 film. “People Will Say We’re In Love,” the one song drawn from the show, is performed with tenderness by Butts in a duet with her husband Cleto Cordero, frontman of Flatland Cavalry. The show’s narrative isn’t necessary to enjoy self-assured songs like “That’ll Never Be Me” and “Spur” or the exuberance of the title cut or “Wild Juanita’s Cactus Juice.” But the concept binds these varied songs and vignettes together into a truly enjoyable and imaginative hour.
American Patchwork Quartet - self-titled
South Carolina-raised, New York-based guitarist Clay Ross embraces Americana by embracing the country’s melting pot heritage, and he’s got two Grammy Awards to show for this ethos through his work with the Gullah-centered band Ranky Tanky. His latest cross-cultural endeavor blends his voice and instrumentation with a Detroit-raised jazz drummer, a Japanese bass player, and the highly-regarded Mumbai-raised Hindustani singer Falu Shah. Her Indian ornamentation and pure tone lights up American folk standards like “Shenandoah” and “Wayfaring Stranger,” while the band’s passion for polyrhythmic grooves takes “Gone For Soldier” and “Lazy John” to new heights of inventiveness and emotional potency.
Kaia Kater - Strange Medicine
Songwriter Kaia Kater brings a hemisphere-spanning outlook and a sense of adventure to her modern folk music, and many have noticed. Her career-breaking album Grenades, picked up by Smithsonian Folkways, explored a web of family history and political liberation rooted in her father’s native island of Grenada. Almost six years elapsed between that album and her May release of Strange Medicine, her strongest statement yet. The music is ambitious and enthralling, especially the opening track “The Witch” and “Fédon,” cut with lush orchestration and harmony help from Taj Mahal. Banjo mingles with hip-hop inspired groove on “In Montreal,” a collaboration with fellow Canadian artist Allison Russell, while “The Internet” uses a prayerful tone to call out the “stupid machine” that won’t let us be ourselves.
Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Past Is Still Alive
Alynda Segarra’s latest is on most every year-end list and took a nomination for Americana Album of the Year, because its quality is self-evident. The non-binary, New Orleans-based songwriter brings assured songcraft and lyrical daring to an ultra-personal outlook forged by punk rocking, rail riding, urban prowling, and many years of touring. The album’s grim take on America didn’t sit so easily during the summer of this year while we did our best to celebrate our joy before the election, but now Segarra’s cynicism feels in tune with the zeitgeist. Their voice is a clarion call, beautifully vivid in the albums’ mix. The vital travelogue song “Buffalo,” about caretaking and extinction, earned a lot of airplay and praise. I feel an even deeper haunting and storytelling power in “Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)” from whence comes the album title. I wonder if listeners would agree with me that TPISA feels a lot like Waxahatchee’s 2024 entry in its musically cozy embrace contrasted with pulse quickening poetry that divulges dark thoughts, blissful moments, complicated relationships, and secret stuff we could puzzle over for years.
Johnny Blue Skies - Passage Du Desir
Sturgill Simpson’s career feels more and more like an extended piece of performance art, not the norm for country songwriters from Kentucky. After protesting the CMA Awards on Lower Broadway and commissioning an expensive animé film companion to his brawny rock album Sound & Fury (among other things), Simpson has now adopted an alter ego to continue a recording career he famously said would only span five albums (under his given name). So meet Johnny Blue Skies, a guy who is either from or devoted to Paris and untethered from a stylistic center. “If The Sun Never Rises Again” has yacht rock DNA. “Scooter Blues” feels laid back and cocksure a la Jimmy Buffett. “Jupiter’s Faerie” is a 7-minute wistful, romantic lookback with a string-saturated climax. Simpson sounds carefree, having overcome a vocal hemorrhage that threatened his career. And while I tend to look for more of an orchestrating esthetic than I find in this eight-song collection, it’s one of the most acclaimed albums in popular music for 2024, and Simpson, by whatever name, is one of the format’s era-shaping stars.
Ben Sollee - Long Haul
The outrageously talented Kentucky cello-playing folk star and social activist Ben Sollee has been busy with film scoring and tending to a growing family since well before pandemic, so he’d not released a fresh album of new songs since 2017. Long Haul marks a welcome return, even if the title cut was inspired by his gruelling battle with long Covid. Sollee cooks up subtly funky, global grooves and layered arrangements, topped with his bourbon smooth and soulful voice. And here, he’s singing about the ways these recent years of love and loss have galvanized his ethos of unity and compassion. Central to the album is “One More Day,” a rumination on the death by suicide of his dear friend and longtime drummer Jordon Ellis. Through many colors and tempos, Sollee’s essential benevolence shines through.
Kevin Gordon - The In Between
When I lived in East Nashville in the late 90s, the name on every serious music fan’s lips was Kevin Gordon, who’d brought a new kind of Louisiana literature and juke joint rock and roll to Music City with his powerful early releases Cadillac Jack’s No. 1 Son and Down To The Well. Years later, Gordon’s mastery with a story and his succulent lyrics are a historic fact and a blessing to our scene, yet it’s still arresting to hear him sing as specifically and beautifully about his past loves, his disillusionments, his family and his faith as he does on The In Between. The pandemic and 2020’s sobering events are more present here than most 2024 albums because this was a project rudely interrupted, back then, by a diagnosis of throat cancer. Gordon’s cancer free today, leaving us more grateful than ever for his timeless roots music and his life force.
The Red Clay Strays - Made By These Moments
Alabama’s Red Clay Strays were the hot stock of 2024 in Americana, blowing up between last winter and this summer with mainstream momentum we rarely see in roots music, securing them the votes to be Americana’s Emerging Act of the Year. While their name suggests country from the heartland, they’re part of a Southern rock revival that connects the Allman Brothers to new roughneck standouts like 49 Winchester. Lead singer Brandon Coleman brings Elvis and Johnny Cash overtones to the stage and more God-fearing faith to his songs than we typically see in Americana. The sincerity and humility in the songs, many tapping into the life struggles of their working class audience, has impressively wide reach and relevance.
Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore - TexiCali
Besides Willie Nelson, country music’s iconic Outlaws have passed on, so projects like these from our roots elders are precious, especially when they’re as honest and enriching as this 11-song set. Alvin and Gilmore pick up where their prior duo outing, Downey To Lubbock (2018) left off. Alvin (a new winner of an Americana Lifetime Achievement Award) offers a moving tribute/collaboration with his late friend Bill Morrisey on “Southwest Chief.” Gilmore is at his spiritual best on “Trying To Be Free.” They sizzle on a couple of blues covers. And they close out with the co-written celebration of perseverance, preservation and friendship on “We’re Still Here.” We’ll be here for them as long as these heroes endure.
Kyshona - Legacy
South Carolina native Kyshona moved to Nashville a decade ago and the roots scene has been much richer for her collaborations and creative spirit. Her breakout Listen captured the soul of 2020 as well as any album of the time. Her latest branched out of a serious study of her family’s history, when she gathered testimony, documents and audio recordings from various relations, including a grandfather who wrote the gospel song “Heaven Is A Beautiful Place.” That’s but one highlight that rocks the middle of this album with a full rhythm section and a choir of Nashville voices. But most of these 16 tracks are Kyshona originals, starting with the stunning metaphorical power of “Elephants.” “The Echo” speaks to the way family wisdom rings across generations. “Alma Ree” is a grandmother who’s visited the artist in dreams to give life advice. Legacy is a work of assiduous history and design, while Kyshona’s skin tingling voice is bountiful throughout.
Kacey Musgraves - Deeper Well
Golden Hour, released in early 2018, marked the last time an album played on Americana radio blew up and became an iconic Grammy Album Of The Year. Since then, eyes have been on vivacious and unconventional country star Kacey Musgraves to see what she might do next. I thought Star Crossed of 2021 was a bit maudlin, asking us to care too much about her doomed relationship. But Deeper Well feels like a welcome extension of the Golden Hour esthetic, an Evermore to her Folklore, if you’ll allow me a Taylor Swift comparison. I kept going back to the Well for the shimmering pop of “Cardinal,” the enlightened self-examination of the title track, the shrewd existentialism of “The Architect” and the dreamy, organic “Heart Of The Woods.” It’s a garden of delights.
Various Artists - My Black Country
Alice Randall quietly made history by becoming the first Black woman to occupy a position of influence in the songwriting community of Music Row, and not in the Black Lives Matter era; she became a publisher and hit songwriter in the 1980s and 90s. Then she became a scholar of country music and a consultant to Ken Burns as he wrote his mighty documentary for PBS. Her memoir My Black Country, an account of her life and her idea of how Black Americans created and enlivened the genre, is one of the most original takes I’ve read on Nashville’s story. The book arrived with this companion, an album of 14 Alice Randall songs recorded - for the first time and as she intended - by Black Women. Adia Victoria, Rhiannon Giddens, Sista Strings, Allison Russell and Miko Marks are among the important singers delivering revelatory performances of songs with vivid stories and sometimes coded messages that the country music business needed to hear then and needs to heed now.
Katie Pruitt - Mantras
Like her Rounder Records label mate Sierra Ferrell, Katie Pruitt had to follow up a stunning debut album with all the pressure that entails, yet both hit home runs. While Mantras doesn’t have that element of surprise that helped send Expectations (my personal album of the year in 2020) to the very top of its field, Mantras is a moving blend of serious subjects and olympian musical execution. With a sly voice of protest, Pruitt deepens her investigation of her conservative Christian upbringing and her search for herself in “White Lies, White Jesus And You.” The lost love song “Leading Actress” makes me heart-achy every time, and I’m not even a gay woman! And there’s that other critical factor - that Pruitt has one of the most thrilling and dynamic voices in her field.
Kelly Willis, Brennen Leigh, and Melissa Carper - Wonder Women of Country
This is only a swinging six-song EP, but it’s proof of life for classic country music in the Americana movement of 2024. Each of these wondrous women has embraced history, regionalism and the old rural blues in personal ways, and in joining forces as a touring act, they amplified their awesomeness. The WWC became a vehicle for Texas veteran and heart-piercing songwriter Kelly Willis when she was otherwise not recording. For Arkansas “rambling soul” Melissa Carper, the trio was a side project amid her prolific creative life, including this year’s excellent solo album, Borned In Ya. And it was great to have something on wax from Brennen Leigh in a year off from releasing albums, which have been part of this feature before and surely will be again.
ISMAY - Desert Pavement
Avery Hellman made the most of their exceptional upbringing - annually attending Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the San Francisco festival founded and run by their grandfather Warren Hellman. Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch offered inspiration, and as ISMAY, the ranch-raised California songwriter made this risk-taking, risk-rewarding album with Watchhouse mandolinist Andrew Marlin. Hellman sings with spare language about small surprises and rustic wonders of life on the family farm. “Stranger In The Barn” weaves a poignant short story into a stylized western idiom. “Melodies” documents the artist’s journey into the heart of songwriting with stunning symbolism and transporting musical ideas. Hellman also released a documentary this year about understanding their hero Lucinda Williams and their own purpose as a performer. Avery certainly expresses that they have a sense of direction on this unique LP.
