It’s that time of the year again! After writing about 100 albums in 2022, the bar was way too high in 2023. So I didn’t, and ended up not publishing it at all. So let’s not do that anymore. Here’s my top five, plus 95 of my other favorites in no particular order.
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.
Wow, every now and then we also feature non-“songwriter” music as our album of the week! It’s only been half a week of listening to it on repeat, but Moon Duo’s seventh LP is probably their most interesting offering so far. “Stars Are the Light” finds the American psych duo at their grooviest and we simply can’t get enough.
And there’s more: brand new tracks by The Deer, The New Pornographers, Chastity Belt, Vivian Girls, Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox, The Comet is Coming, Mão Morta, Weeping Icon, Xylouris White, Telefon Tel Aviv, Sturgill Simpson, Loving, Red River Dialect, Darrin Bradbury and Margo Price, Colter Wall, Molly Sarlé, Dori Freeman, Mount Eerie and Julie Doiron, Donivan Berube, Will Johnson, The Milk Carton Kids, the Mountain Goats, and Jim James with The Louisville Orchestra.
Time for our return after the usual early June festival break. Bill Callahan is back with his first long play in six years, an unusually twenty songs long record called Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest. It sounds like, well, exactly what you would expect from Callahan.
Go have a listen after you’re done with our ridiculously long playlist – 31 songs by 30 different artists over almost two hours: House and Land, Jambinai, Shellac, Kate Tempest, RF Shannon, Whitney, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Hawley, Lower Dens, Julia Shapiro, Stef Chura, The Divine Comedy, Adam Green, Tim Heidecker, David Berman’s Purple Mountains, Will Johnson, Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real, Hiss Golden Messenger, Chris Stapleton, Willie Nelson, Sturgill Simpson, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Michael Fracasso, Fruit Bats, Eilen Jewell, Bedouine, Joan Shelley, Julien Baker, and Shannon Lay.