Been a busy few weeks with the kickoff of both forms of football and while my free time has gladly taken a corresponding nose dive as I get to know the latest iterations of each of my teams and which ones might be decent, I thought it was worth taking a break to share some finds so you have something better to listen to while you watch other than that same Miller Lite commercial for the five billionth time. (“It is both! It is both! [Funny the first time and increasingly annoying every subsequent time you see it!]”) We’ll start with some southern-inflected songstresses whose sounds span everything from doo wop and country to folk, sometimes sprinkling all three on their excellent albums. The first is from a duo down in New Orleans, the Lostines, and their aptly titled debut, Meet the Lostines.
The band is comprised of lead singers Camille Wind Weatherford and Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler, and while the pair may struggle to fit names that prolific on a business card, their voices fit together far more seamlessly, offering eleven fantastic examples to luxuriate in before you’re left wanting more. Both singers grew up in musical families in Oregon before each moving to New Orleans as young adults and quickly getting sucked into that marvelous city’s rich musical and artistic culture. (There’s something fitting about these two meeting at a campfire one night, as their harmonies call to mind some special kind of witchcraft.) They started singing together and working on songs, releasing a pair of EPs the past six years (their self-titled EP came out in 2018, while Heart of Night came out in 2022), but they’ve really pulled out the stops on this one, throwing everything from guitars and strings to theramin, fiddle, and piano out to accompany their angelic voices.
There’s a slew of guests on the album, too, with everyone from Sam Doores and Howe Pearson from the Deslondes to Sam Gelband of Mr Sam and the People People showing up to give it a warm, family feel. (Doores also produced.) And while this may be a communal affair, Weatherford and Reece-Kaigler’s voices are the undisputed stars, calling to mind forbears like the Everly Brothers or modern day disciples such as Lucius. Songs like the opening “A Tear” and “Neon Lights” remind you of the latter, while tracks like “After Party,” “Playing the Fool,” and “Southwest Texas” conjure the former, nailing their uplifting, country-tinged dynamics. The album’s slow-burning ballads pack almost as much of a punch, stripping back to scarcely more than the power of the pair’s smoldering voices on tunes like “Come Back to my Arms,” “Eye for an Eye,” and the closing dream “Last Night.” There’s nary a bad one in the bunch, giving us an extremely polished, solid debut to enjoy. Give the Mamas and Papas style “No Mama Blues” a spin here, which is one of my current faves as it bolsters the pair’s voices with a handful of their friends’ as they build to booming four or five part harmonies in the chorus. Really solid stuff…
We’ll head up to West Virginia next to spend some time with the rising star that is Sierra Ferrell and while most folks (myself included) might just be getting to know her, the album generating all the buzz (the excellent Trail of Flowers) is actually her fourth since she got started six years ago. (Her debut Pretty Magic Spell came out in 2018.) Ferrell seems to have survived some rough times, first growing up in a trailer with her two siblings and single, working mom before leaving to live as a nomadic rail-rider in her twenties, bouncing between Seattle and New Orleans to scratch out a living busking. It was during this latter time that Ferrell picked up a pretty serious drug habit, one she claims killed her five times due to a string of overdoses, before she decided to get clean and chart a new course.
This peripatetic lifestyle seems to have informed her musical styles, as her album hopscotches across genres as she used to traverse state lines. There’s traditional country tracks like “Dollar Bill Bar” (winner of a fabled #FridayFreshness title over at our ‘Gram) and “Money Train,” as well as bluegrass/folk style songs like “I Could Drive you Crazy” and “I’ll Come off the Mountain.” There’s more esoteric influences as well, like the Native American feel of “Fox Hunt,” the barbershop elements of “Lighthouse,” and the old school murder balladry of “Rosemary,” which all shine. And there’s even more modern imprints like the Decemberists/Squirrel Nut Zippers vibe of “Chittlin’ Cookin’ Time in Cheatham County” or the Chuck Berry/Bing Crosby mashup “Why Haven’t You Loved me Yet,” which calls to mind their classics “You Never Know” and “Mele Kalikimaka,” respectively. Somehow it all fits together, despite the ever shifting tones and colors. My current fave of the bountiful bunch is the opening “American Dreaming,” which is a lush, powerful punch in the chest. Give it a listen here:
Last but not least is the lass from Livingston, Montana, Abby Webster, and while she may not be from the south her music definitely reflects that landscape and vibe. She’s a bit of an unknown — she’s released a handful of singles stretching back to 2017, but they never culminated in an album (or even an EP) until this year. (Webster is a self-described “recluse,” saying she “only recently found the confidence to share her music,” which helps explain the trajectory a bit.) Whatever she did to overcome those fears I’m certainly glad she did, as I’ve been listening to the album repeatedly since I discovered it a month or so ago.
Similar to her list mates Webster glides through a number of styles on the album, from country and folk to more introspective ballads, but what sets her apart is the acid sense of humor she subtly slips in to some of the songs. While Ferrell sprinkled a dash of humor in occasionally (as on “Crazy,” for example), Webster does so more frequently, taking chunks out of both herself and her misbehaving mister several times. On tracks like “Calliope” and “BBQ Chips” she attacks both parties, saying “don’t mind you’ve got an addiction to leaving me… [or] balls deep in a bald faced lie” and “just like BBQ chips it’s so hard to resist cursing the ground that you roam, but I’m too cute to have anything to do with the future of your godforsaken soul,” respectively. (She follows these up with equally excellent lines like “I drank all your booze and smoked all your tobacco, but I let you take me like a pill” and “All my life just wasting time didn’t know I was already home — when that became clear I ’bout spit out my beer, [you’re] just a f&*kboy on a pedestal,” from the pair.) Other times she ditches the tough talk and exposes some naked vulnerability as on the plaintive “Entertainers” and “Somehow” or the Fleetwood Mac-flecked “Sorry.” (“When you tell me that you love me I look for the ways it can’t be — heard a waver in your voicebox or the way you put on your socks. It seemed angry, it seemed judgy, it seemed like you didn’t love me,” leaving her “busy drinking in my closet with my imaginary friend” on the latter.)
Webster is equally adept at crafting mental images, whether to the idylls of summer as in “Long Weekend,” “Swimming,” and back half entry “River Rats” (“summer days melting through the hourglass, cherries stained my lips as the minutes passed. I’m collecting pits and bottle caps…” from the latter) or to the varying heights of a relationship as in “Bad Bad Bad” and “Cat Steven’s Greatest Hits!” (“I traced your name in my leg with my index finger” from the high times and “I put all the records you gave to me in the dishwasher at the Holiday Inn” from the down ones.) My current fave is “Camping,” which combines a little bit of everything — the humor, the melody, and the imagery. Give it a listen here:
We’ll close our sonic Sadie Hawkins dance with a trio of songs from the men, starting with the return of Killer Mike. The heftier half of beloved rap act Run the Jewels just released his well-received seventh solo album Michael last year, but he’s already back with another one, this time on the gospel infused Songs For Sinners & Saints. It takes some of the songs from the last album and reimagines them, with The Mighty Midnight Revival choir adding the fireworks this time around. Occasionally they achieve new heights, as on this one, which is a perfect fusion of Mike’s linguistic gymnastics and the lush soul of the choir. Check out “Nobody Knows” here:
Up next is another side project, this time from Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis. It’s an outing eight years in the making — back in 2016 Philippakis went into the studio with Afrobeat founding father and drummer Tony Allen (of Fela Kuti fame). His band had just released their fourth album What Went Down (their last solid one in my opinion, it landed at #7 on my 2015 list), but Philippakis was looking for something different. The two jammed and what resulted were a handful of songs that were mostly completed, but never finalized until Allen’s death in 2020 sparked Philippakis to do just that. The songs definitely bear the fingerprints of both men’s main gigs — from Allen’s afrobeat and jazz leanings to Philippakis’ knotty guitar parts — and they remind me of fellow British frontman Thom Yorke’s side project The Smile with their syncopated percussion and jagged edges. It’s a pretty decent listen, but this one edges out lead single “Walk Through Fire” and is my current fave — check out “Clementine” here:
Wrapping things up is the most surprising entry here, at least based on his recent material and how it’s rubbed me. It comes courtesy of former White Stripes wildman Jack White and his latest solo album No Name, his sixth overall and first in two years. (Entering Heaven Alive came out in 2022.) While I remain a huge fan of the Stripes, White’s solo outings have been consistently disappointing and even his renditions of Stripes classics live indicated just how important Ms Meg was to the magic of that band. (Seeing them in those early years where they seemed to be performing only for each other — staring at/facing themselves and turning the stadium full of onlookers into peeping Toms and Tinas — remains a top ten experience.)
Whether a byproduct of boredom, of aging and its inherent urge to recapture past glories, or even a simple dare, something got White to revisit his garage rock roots and it’s like he hasn’t lost a step. He rips off an album full of trashy, bluesy gems, letting his biggest Zeppelin impulses run rampant to showcase a fieriness and flare I’d long since thought had been extinguished. White hasn’t sounded this good in years (this one will definitely be showing up again here in a few months…), particularly on this one, which swaggers along with almost Elephant era power. Crank it up and give it a spin here: