Steve Gunn’s sixth album, ‘Other You’ is a perfect end of summer album. It’s also our album of the week. Our 33th playlist of the year also features songs from new albums by Alex Rex, Aidan O’Rourke, Pile, Wednesday, Tré Burt, Summer Dean, and Matt Paxton.
Nathan Salsburg’s work is more associated with American folk guitar playing than anything else. But through his new project, “Psalms”, Salsburg goes different places, creating brand new arrangements for Biblical psalms and singing in the original Hebrew.
If it wasn’t for the accent, you would think Jade Bird was another southwestern American half-country, half-Stevie Nicks songwriter. You know, the kind we love around here. It’s easy to know where the confusion might come from: in her second album, the English musician is joined by producer Dave Cobb (who else?) to bring us one of the most interesting Americana records of the year so far.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I wrote “Produced by Dan Auerbach” here when describing an album. Yola‘s “Stand For Myself” is another of those. Her debut record, “Walk Through Fire”, was gaining serious traction when the pandemic hit, robbing her of well deserved high profile shows and festival slots – but not for long. Fresh off a Newport Folk Festival slot, this might be the possible songwriter’s dream summer.
Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay’s second album as LUMP is our recommendation of the week. It can be easy to dismiss these songs as scraps from whatever doesn’t find their way into Marling’s “main” albums. But those ideas, coupled with Lindsay’s marvellous synth work, come to have a life of their own here, and “Animal” has some of the best tracks we’ve heard from both musicians in a while.