Greatest New Music from the Blue Ridge and Past
Each month our editors curate a playlist of recent music, primarily specializing in unbiased artists from the South. In September we’re highlighting new tunes from Billy Strings, Carbon Leaf, and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings.
Carbon Leaf
“Backmask 1983”
On “Backmask 1983,” the primary single from the band’s first lengthy participant in a decade, Carbon Leaf combines area rock energy chords with spacey keyboards and a bevy of eighties references, together with Farrah Fawcett posters, the Challenger explosion, concern of the Bermuda Triangle and Bigfoot, and the inherent risks of taking part in a vinyl file backwards, to offer a deep sense of nostalgia for Gen X listeners who got here of age within the mysteries of the pre-internet age. For followers of the band who date again some thirty years—and are sufficiently old to recollect its allusions—this track is sort of a little little bit of time journey. – D.S.
Skylar Gudasz
“Truck”
North Carolina artist Skylar Gudasz takes a soul-searching journey in “Truck,” a observe from her newly launched album, “Nation.” Within the laid-back roots-rock tune, Gudasz calls out comforting voices from the radio, together with Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris, earlier than turning the lyrics to query what’s on the highway forward (“What are you searching for on the market, woman?”). – J.F.
Billy Strings
“Freeway Hypnosis”
Billy Strings has turned bluegrass into an electrifying area spectacle, mixing quick selecting with wild gentle shows and psychedelic pedal results. Strings’ sonic evolution into massive rooms is on full show all through the brand new reside album, Billy Strings Dwell Vol. 1, a 10-track effort compiled from reveals in 2023 and earlier this 12 months. The standout “Freeway Hypnosis” is a wayward traveler’s anthem that begins out as a traditional-sounding foot-stomper however regularly drifts right into a blissful deep-space exploration, with distant whiffs of the Grateful Useless’s “Eyes of the World.” – J.F.
Fruition
“Saturday Night time”
Fruition returns with their first file in 4 years and the primary single, “Saturday Night time,” is a down-tempo ode to a easy message: life’s joys are uncomplicated when you’ve gotten your lover shut by. The band delivers a cool acoustic rhythm, accented by some tasty slide guitar, that buoys the stellar harmonies of Kellen Asebroek, Jay Cobb Anderson, and Mimi Naja. In a world pushed by the relentless hustle and bustle of our fashionable schedules, this can be a good reminder that happiness is shut at hand if we solely listen. – D.S.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
“Empty Trainload of Sky”
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have simply returned with their first batch of recent songs in seven years. The August-released album “Woodland” pays tribute to the duo’s longtime Nashville studio, which they’ve been rebuilding because it suffered devastating twister injury again in 2020. The album’s first observe leans into the bluesy facet of the pair’s rustic people sound, with earthy harmonies and fluid acoustic strings highlighting their incomparable chemistry. – J.F.
Wayne Graham
“A Silent Prayer”
Taking pictures a bottle rocket at a site visitors gentle from the window of a van is precisely the kind of shenanigan you’d count on from a band out on the highway. This seemingly innocent pursuit grew to become the inspiration for the refrain for “A Silent Prayer,” establishing a disconnect between actions and penalties, whereas serving as a metaphor for a way our personal efforts—benign or in any other case—can depart us on shaky floor inside {our relationships}. The primary single is from the band’s new file, “Bastion,” which releases this month on Hickman Holler Information, Tyler Childers’ imprint. – D.S.
Fancy Hole
“Strawberry Moon”
Fancy Hole is the brand new North Carolina-based mission that includes the Love Language’s Stuart McLamb and songwriter/producer Charles Crossingham. A spotlight from the collaborator’s just lately launched self-titled album is that this contemplative heartland rock ballad that features a radiant vocal help from Sharon Van Etten. With celestial pedal metal offering some twilight hues, McLamb and Van Etten commerce contemplative verses about indecision and combined indicators in a relationship. – J.F.
Kevin Gordon
“Holding My Brother Down”
Nashville songwriter Kevin Gordon ferociously channels his empathy on this name for social justice. Rooted in a dream punctuated with imagery of lynching and our nation’s historical past of social injustice, Gordon connects our transgressions of the previous with the continued misdeeds of the current. The message herein is easy: till there may be justice for all, there may be justice for none, and the mixed burdens of tragedy and progress are there for all of us to bear. – D.S.