It’s been a terrific year for all kinds of music, but the amount of passionate and engaging albums that feature guitars (usually) and songwriting is something to behold. Here are some short takes on the ones to which I keep returning, from veterans and newcomers alike. Some have been or will be featured on my podcast, so please subscribe to stay in the know.
Yours Are The Only Ears - We Know The Sky The path to Susannah Cutler’s second album - and first in five years - took her through clear-eyed self-examination along with the teachings of The Artist’s Way, a venerable treatise on the creative process. What she arrived at was an exquisitely crafted set of songs, with the perfect frames, including chiming guitars, gentle strings, sparkling keyboards, and the occasional woodwind, setting off her brook-clear voice to sublime effect. The songs vary from dreamy to driving, all with that special sense of a musician presenting herself with a purity all too infrequently heard.
Hand Habits - Sugar The Bruise The EP format, with its ill-defined length between a single and an album, can be freeing for some artists. But for Meg Duffy, who performs as Hand Habits, the shorter form is only part of the picture. After three increasingly polished albums of indie-folk-psych-rock, they reconnected with songwriting in a rawer form by teaching a workshop that included both beginners and more experienced writers. This led to a collaboration with Luke Temple and Philip Weinrobe, which may have opened Duffy up to new processes and products. Either way, there’s tremendous variety here, from Something Wrong, with its breeziness interrupted by lacerating guitar, to Andy In Stereo, which flirts with Tropicalia, to The Bust Of Nefertiti, which asks a question worthy of Scott Walker (“Why is she in Germany?”) to a melody that nods at Leonard Cohen, before slipping into a danceable celebration. That last song is one of Duffy’s crowning achievements, but there is much here of which they can be exceedingly proud.
Water From Your Eyes - Everyone’s Crushed For whatever reason, I didn’t fully connect with this kicky collection of arty, synthy, dancy stuff until I heard the hypnotic groove of Barley blasting out over Central Park. Something clicked while Nate Amos traded guitar chords back and forth with a guest guitarist and Rachel Brown gave us some sleek dance moves in between offering their cool vocals, which seemed to both comment on the song and be the song. It’s a goddamned brilliant track and the live experience gave me a greater connection to the album as a whole. Everyone’s Crushed is actually the duo’s third full-length and, while I was dimly aware of 2021’s Structure, had I heard the epic post-Stereolab mesmerism of Break from 2019’s Somebody Else’s Song, I would have been an instant devotee. Whatever, I’m here now and you should be, too.
Them Airs - Viper Island The latest EP from this Connecticut-based band both improves their production values and increases the extremity between poles of sugary-sweet melody and metallic crunch. Don’t fight the neck-snapping contrasts, just go with the heady flow.
Foyer Red - Yarn The Hours Away There’s such an unvarnished enthusiasm throughout this debut album that it’s impossible not to join in the fun. The off-kilter rhythms, wayward melodies, and dense guitar interplay of Wetland Walk is a perfect encapsulation of their methodic madness. There’s also the way Elana Riordan’s warm vocals contrast with Mitch Myers’ edgier voice on Plumber Unite!, which makes you appreciate each approach more than if you had just one of them. On A Barnyard Bop they are unafraid of the very brink of chaos, making it easy for you to follow them there, while Etc. transmits lessons from Pere Ubu, which Cleveland’s finest may have themselves forgotten, about how seemingly unrelated elements can come together. It’s quite a trick how Foyer Red’s sound seems to assemble in real time, with the listener the final binding force holding it all together.
Lifeguard - Dressed In Trenches There’s something in the water in Chicago - and in the home of the Lowenstein family in particular. Penelope Lowenstein is 1/3 of the brilliant Horsegirl and now we have her brother, drummer Isaac Lowenstein, and his band (also including Asher Case (bass) and Kai Slater (guitar)) staking their own noise-rock claim on their latest EP. Yet another leap from last year’s Crowd Can Talk EP, these five songs find their deployment of noise, melody, and rhythm more confident and even thrilling, especially on the breathless 10 Canisters (OFB), which was a real barnburner when I saw them in concert last month. Who’s next, Mr. & Mrs. Lowenstein? P.S. While we await a new LP from Lifeguard, Slater has been busy with his side project, Sharp Pins - check out their sunny (if still noisy) album, Turtle Rock, which came out earlier this year).
Claud - Supermodels Following up 2021’s excellent Super Monster, some of which I had the delight of hearing in concert, Claud has delivered another exceedingly tuneful and heartfelt collection of upbeat pop. There’s a little more grit at the heart of this one, however, as if the tracks were built up from demos to maintain a spontaneity sometimes lost in the studio. However they got there, Supermodels sounds as fresh on the 10th listen as on the first. Even when the lyrics hold a core of bitterness (From Glass Wall: “You seem interesting/You seem full of shit.”) there’s such a natural ease to Claud’s style that you find yourself uplifted. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure.
Jeffrey Silverstein - Western Sky Music Even when his songwriting is crisper, as on Cowboy Grass, which opens this second full-length, Silverstein is never entirely earthbound. With the sweet afterburn of Barry Walker, Jr.’s pedal steel as extra propulsion, Silverstein seems to float just inside the atmosphere of a starry desert night. His comforting voice and the drumming of Akron/Family’s Dana Buoy keep things from diffusing entirely, but the balance between the "cosmic” and the “Americana” is perfect.
Anastasia Coope - Tough Sun/Seemeely Ever since I saw Coope silence the crowd during her set opening for Lael Neale, I’ve been waiting for her to release something closer to what I heard that night. Now we have this dreamy single, which combines her layered vocals and circular guitar picking into a blissfully mesmeric sound. More to come, I’m sure, but this is more than a placeholder.
Big Blood - First Aid Kit Putting your 13-year-old daughter on your album could seem a self-absorbed move, but for Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin, not including Quinnissa would be like shutting a screen door against a hurricane. While she only sings lead on four tracks here, her incendiary wail leaves a mark on your soul even when she’s singing backup. Colleen is no slouch, either, and both of them are the perfect foil to the rough-hewn sound, which seems to bring Bauhaus and Link Wray together in a dark union, driven by Mulkerin’s often brawny guitar. Kinsella and Mulkerin have been at it since the 90s in one band or another but their time has most certainly come with this powerful album. Don’t apologize for being late, just come in and join the family. P.S. First Aid Kit was mostly recorded in 2019; if you want to hear how Quinnisa Kinsella Mulkerin’s style is evolving, check out the Florida Man EP from 2021, made when she and her bandmates were 16.
Lucinda Williams - Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart If anyone deserves the right to just let loose and rock, it’s Lucinda Williams, who had a stroke in 2020 that landed her in the ICU for a week. Then came rehab, not to mention rebuilding as her Nashville home had been damaged by a tornado. One of the first things you hear on the stomping Let’s Get The Band Back Together, which opens the album, is how strong and clear her voice sounds. It did cross my mind that (no judgement) she might be smoking less - or not at all - after the stroke. What ever the reason, her voice has regained much of its flexibility and float, leaving her sounding relaxed and confident, connecting easily with sorrow and joy as each song requires. That blazing opener also shows off her collaborators, especially her longtime guitarist Stuart Mathis, who knows how to instigate what Keith Richards calls “the fine art of guitar weaving” while also whipping off solos that blister, soar, and celebrate.
While Williams is known for her poetic lyrics - and there are plenty here - she also lightens up quite a bit, as on Rock N Roll Heart (“That's when you know you've got a rock n roll heart/Yeah-yeah-yeah, a rock n roll heart/You don't have to be that smart/You don't have to be a work of art”), which compels you to sing along without thinking too hard. And when the songs dig deeper, as on Hum’s Liquors, a tribute to the late Bob Stinson of The Replacements with his brother Tommy on backing vocals, the results are equally illuminating and devastating: “Every morning it was the same/You were walking down 22nd again/Such a lonely waltz of pain/Every morning at a quarter to ten.” Co-written with her husband Tom Overby, who knew Stinson, and Travis Stephens, that song and Stolen Moments, which memorializes Tom Petty, both reflect on mortality and how lucky she feels to be here.
The final song, Never Gonna Fade Away, gives a hint of the struggle it may have been to get to this album, as when she sings “When the words don't rhyme and I can't find a line/And I'm looking for a sign/And I'm running out of time.” But when she leans into that chorus, surrounded by organs, guitars, bass, and drums, it feels like she’s here to stay. It should also be mentioned that Bruce Springsteen sings on a couple of songs, but respectfully steers clear of upstaging Williams. A tough as nails comeback album that’s also the first record with Springsteen I’ve wanted to listen to since Lou Reed’s Street Hassle…now if that isn’t a rock and roll miracle, I don’t know what is.
From the archives:
Record Roundup: Songs And Singers
AnEarful’s First Decade: 100 Best Albums Of The 2010s
Of Note In 2020: Rock, Folk, Etc.
Record Roundup: Guitars, Guitars, Etc.
See Lucinda Williams
Lifeguard is amazing. And they're only in high school! Mind blowing. Jeffrey Silverstein's record might be my favorite on the list, if only for the way it transports me back to my late teens/early 20's and all of the road trips to nowhere I took through out the western half of the U.S.