10. Hurray for the Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive (Nonesuch)
Bandleader and singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra (aka Hurray for the Riff Raff) takes one on a personal journey to a place where memory and myth mix. Her music is full of hooks as her past tugs at her present sense of who she is and what has formed her. She tells autobiographical stories about hard times, gender-fluid people she knew and loved, polluted landscapes of junk and flowers, petty crime, etc. She lived in the places most of us avoided and befriended the strangers whose differences from the norm made them seem dangerous. Segarra goes back and forth in time because the past is still with us, and the future is now if we can only understand the present.
Segarra’s music is full of flourishes as she celebrates love and survival. Songs such as “Buffalo”, “Alibi, “Colossus of Roads,” and “Hawkmoon” treat American history as both legends and maps whose reality resides in our imagination. The people she meets along the way become more important than their locations. By telling their stories, she tells us her own and what a wild journey it has been. She has led an adventurous, independent life, and as William Faulkner, a writer who knew the past was never past, she has more than endured. This record announces that she has prevailed. – Steve Horowitz
9. MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks (Anti-)
MJ Lenderman’s rise has been meteoric. Pre-COVID, he was working in an ice cream shop and stealing away time for self-booked tours or on the road with Wednesday. His 2019 underrated self-titled LP, primarily influenced by Jason Molina, failed to make waves. Even when he had extra time during the pandemic, Ghost of Your Guitar Solo (2021) was mainly lo-fi and experimental. Granted, some of those tracks were never fully realized (“Live Jack” and “Catholic Priest” eventually came together on MJ Lenderman’s 2023 live album), but he made a significant jump on his next effort, Boat Songs (2022). Who knew there was a market for inane lyrics about boats and professional basketball?
MJ Lenderman keeps the momentum going with Manning Fireworks, which has as much to do with his lyrical witticisms as with his musical chops (he plays nearly every instrument). The record may not initially seem as fresh as Boat Songs. Still, every track resonates, including some standouts, and MJ Lenderman has stumbled upon a recipe for keeping forlorn hipsters thoroughly entertained. – Patrick Gill
8. Sierra Ferrell – Trail of Flowers (Rounder)
Sierra Ferrell’s music harkens back to a mythic American dream of cowboys, bars, and trains. She knows it’s not reality. The singer-songwriter realizes the American dream is more of an air-conditioned nightmare than the one she imagines in her songs. Ferrell’s music is based on old-time tunes with roots in bluegrass and folk songs. They are located in dive bars, steam locomotives, fox hunts, and the like. Ferrell sees the world as it is and as it used to be, just like we see our friends as who they once were and what they have become. She’s a romantic looking for love and excitement. Her skills as an instrumentalist allow her to dwell in both places at the same time.
The West Virginia gal turns a cover of a corny country song such as “Chitlin’ Cookin’ Time in Cheatum County” into a wild romp, recovering from a broken heart into a life lesson on “Wish You Well” and a track about hunting and fishing into a sexy love song on “I Could Drive You Crazy”. In person, Ferrell’s known for dressing up in elaborate ball gowns and fancy costumes that make her seem from another world and at a different time. On record, she can transport listeners to another well using just her musical talents. – Steve Horowitz
7. Joy Oladokun – Observations from a Crowded Room (Amigo / Verve Forecast / Republic)
In Joy Oladokun’s Observations From a Crowded Room, the singer-songwriter comes across as someone looking for meaning in a heartless world. It’s not just that the world is full of strangers but that she feels alienated. She finds comfort in books and dope and music and sometimes even religion. Isn’t that most of us? Except the particulars of Oladokun’s existence are atypical. Oladokun is a queer, black daughter of Nigerian immigrants who grew up in small-town Texas and never felt like she quite fit in. Her artistic sensibility gave her a defense against prejudice while it insulated her against the feelings of community.
The 15 tracks veer from spoken word observations to beat heavy pop fare to African chants. Taken as a whole, the record comes off as a plea for solace—for herself and others. It’s easy these days to wonder if we don’t matter. “Am I the only one?” she asks. Oladokun is not being overly dramatic. The adult world is fucked, but we are not kids anymore. The singer includes us in her pleas. She is us, although she fears we may no longer identify with her. Friends don’t always stay friends. Everything changes. There are no answers. There are only questions. The record is how she deals with the pain by sharing the load with us. Listening offers comfort to the audience. – Steve Horowitz
6. Madi Diaz – Weird Faith (Anti-)
Madi Diaz writes and sings pleasant-sounding, sincere songs about love, breakups, and the games we play with ourselves when things don’t work out the way we expect them to. She has a warm and expressive voice combined with a latent sneer at her emotions. Hurting another is just another way of wounding ourselves. Things like crying can feel good, and as Joni Mitchell once sang, “Laughing and crying / you know it’s the same release”. Diaz has a sense of humor about her own feelings and the situations others find themselves in when connecting with her. There is more to being intimate than just being physically naked. Commitment is an undisguised danger. Do we want to kill our lovers, fuck them, or marry them? The answer is all three. Or as she sings, “When I love you / I hate you the most.”
Musically, Diaz’s mostly acoustic melodies reveal the power of being direct. Her delivery has a polished rawness, like that of varnished mahogany. Her duet with Kacey Musgraves, “Don’t Do Me Good”, has been nominated for a Best Americana Performance Grammy Award, while the album it comes from (this one) was nominated for Best Folk Album. Diaz’s voice conveys the sincerity of the joker, who knows that pies in the face really hurt but that whipped cream is a delight. There is an ache in her throat one minute and a giggle the next. That’s the lesson of tough love. – Steve Horowitz
5. Aaron Lee Tasjan – Stellar Evolution (Blue Élan)
Aaron Lee Tasjan aims to entertain. His songs are hook-laden and filled with clever instrumental touches and wordplay. Just as important is Tasjan’s desire to make the world a safe place for all, a community where all individuals can be free to express their individualism. The colorful and literal descriptions of sex and drugs are offered to show the range of behaviors, like phases of the celestial bodies in the sky. He’s no astronomer. Tasjan is more like someone who looks up on a cloudless night and goes wow.
The singer-songwriter begins by presenting an “Alien Space Queen”, a buoyant pop ode about living outside binary gender norms. It’s not just girls that want to have fun, the song suggests with its cheesy electronic accompaniment evoking Cyndi Lauper’s hit; it’s the girl in everyone. The instrumental exuberance transforms the lyrics (“She drives an old Trans Am in sunset gold / Yeah, she’s trans femme, a demi girl dream”) into a festive celebration. The last song more soberly examines being in love and “Young”. It’s mostly just Tasjan quietly playing the piano as if he were singing a hymn in an old wooden church. “Young” is beautiful because of its artistry and its inclusiveness.
In between these tracks, Tasjan points out the milestones along the way of becoming and accepting who he is and objecting to the impediments. Stellar Evolution is both an act of protest and a declaration of pride. The latter is especially true in the waggish “I Love America Better Than You”, with lines about dirty water, hot dogs, Walmart, post-traumatic stress disorder, and wealth disparities. Tasjan pokes fun at the American Dream while affirming his patriotism. – Steve Horowitz
4. Swamp Dogg – Blackgrass (Oh Boy)
By its company alone, Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St illustrates Swamp Dogg as the modern-day luminary he’s become for many in modern popular music. At its core, this collection interprets soul, funk, and jazz themes through the lens of bluegrass and Americana forms. But it’s so much more than that. Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St is a timeless collection of American music that could only be created and delivered by the 81-year-old self-proclaimed “original D-O-double G”. If for some reason you’ve not fallen into the legend of Swamp Dogg before, this should be the reason that you do. – Avery Gregurich
3. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings – Woodland (Acony)
Woodland gets its name from the East Nashville recording studio Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, which operated for more than 20 years before it was destroyed in a tornado. These self-penned songs suggest the wisdom learned by starting over, remembering the past, and moving forward by seeing time frozen in a tableau of modern existence. Everything here has already been done and is not yet finished in the best sense of visionary experience. Some songs were partially composed before the storm, others freshly minted. They all share a sense of urgency and doom (“The Day the Mississippi Died”) as well as hope and sweetness (“Howdy, Howdy”). The mix reveals the Tao of country music: the process of nature by which all things evolve.
Welch’s voice has a foggy edge, making her sound old and wise. Rawlings finger picks his guitar carefully as if each note serves an important individual function. The songs may move slowly but always go somewhere like a freight train rambling down the tracks. So pick your boxcar and hop on in! There’s plenty of company in the lyrics, from law enforcement officers to gamblers, old ladies and young girls, blackbirds and trees, and a whole lot of sky. As with the fables of Aesop, there’s a moral to all the tales. Life’s journey is strange, but there is always time for one more for the road. – Steve Horowitz
2. Johnny Blue Skies – Passage du Desir
Sturgill Simpson is recording under the name Johnny Blue Skies now, and apparently, this is not a Chris Gaines or Sasha Frere-type move but a more permanent guise. His marvelous new record is both a return to country, a venture into pop, and a blues rock release, depending on which one of the eight tracks one plays. The French album title reveals his cosmopolitan sentiments. The place referred to is a spot where lovers privately meet for trysts. Ooh la la. However, the album’s narrator/persona is more domestic everyman more concerned about getting fat or stepping on Legos than indulging in hot love affairs.
Passage du Desir has a relaxed vibe as the singer croons about lost friends and changing times. “They don’t ask you what your name is when you get up to heaven,” he blithely notes on “Who I Am”. That may seem incongruous for an album self-referentially about identity, but the sentiment makes sense. The record’s overwhelming theme is change. The individual cuts serve slices of life whose subjects veer from the mundane to the futuristic. He reminds us to wipe our feet before we enter the house one minute and travel through space to Jupiter with the faeries the next. Death is just an open door. Music is just the way Johnny travels these days because he knows nothing will ever stay the same, even when one remains comfortable at home. – Steve Horowitz
1. Sarah Jarosz – Polaroid Lovers (Rounder)
Native Texan Sarah Jarosz left her more recent New York City home for Nashville and added a twang to her music. Her voice sparkles as the folk conventions of the past have been replaced by pop country elegance. Her songwriting and playing have never been better. Place has always been important to the singer-songwriter’s music. One can hear resonances from her various homes on the individual tracks. She presents romance in the Lone Star state on “Mezcal and Lime”, the lure of Manhattan on “Columbus & 89th”, and hear the Tennessee mountains of “Take the High Road”. These are metaphorical locations whose actual existence doesn’t obscure the fact that they represent states of passion. Jarosz presents a road map to the places one’s heart travels. As Allan Ginsberg used to put it, hers is the lost America of love.
Jarosz’s instrumental skills (mandolin, guitar, clawhammer banjo) have long been appreciated. She was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2009 when she was just 18 years old for the song “Mansinneedof” from her debut album Song Up in Head. She has only improved as a player, vocalist, and songwriter since then. The 11 cuts on Polaroid Lovers more than prove that she’s “Good at What I Do”, as she sings on the penultimate song. The album is a contemporary masterwork that showcases Jarosz’s continuing evolution as an artist. – Steve Horowitz