Spring is a transformation. A reawakening. A rebirth.
Time marches on and no matter how cold the winter may be, the spring arrives and reminds us that we can start again. These songs represent that sound and spirit.
The past three years have felt like a long spring for our band. From writing and recording our album, Waving From A Sea, to now playing those songs every night on tour, we have found the warmth and growth within ourselves. – Michigan Rattlers
“You Must Believe In Spring” – Bill Evans
Bill Evans’ music sounds like the 30 minutes before sunrise or after sunset. It’s like wet soil for me as an artist – refreshing and fertile. – Graham Young
“Everything Is Peaceful Love” – Bon Iver
I’ve heard Justin Vernon talk about this record as finding what he loved again about making music, it’s a rebirth of sorts for him. Even the GOAT loses the muse sometimes; an inspiration for us all to keep trying. – GY
“Inconsolable” – Katie Gavin
I found a shaky fan video of this months before it ever went live and haven’t stopped listening since. To me, this song is about nurture versus nature and choosing to defy patterns and spring a new path for yourself. – GY
“Geranium Day” – Michigan Rattlers
This is a song from our new album, Waving From A Sea, that is about those moments that bring your life into focus. Times that make you feel the ground beneath your feet. It’s about making it through the transformation of spring into summer and soaking up every bit of the day that you can. – GY
“Joy Spring” – Clifford Brown, Max Roach Quintet
I love the melody in this song, it reminds me of spring. The standard’s title is the pet name Clifford Brown gave to his wife. You can’t go wrong putting Clifford and Max together. – Tony Audia
“Spangled” – Fust
Fust’s latest album, Big Ugly, has been in my heavy rotation this spring. The song “Spangled” features moments of frustration and doubt. I get the sense that many Americans are feeling the same way this spring. – TA
“Countdown” – Phoenix
The line in the song, “We’re sick for the big sun,” sums it up. You’ve gotta have a Phoenix song if you’re talking about the rebirth of spring. – TA
“The Birthday Party” – The 1975
This song feels like waking up to me. The muted instruments and the intimacy and fragility of the vocal all feel like thawing out after a long winter. Both outside and in. – Christian Wilder
“Tinseltown is in the Rain” – The Blue Nile
I fell in love with The Blue Nile about a year ago. I’m perpetually obsessed with how they make this song switch feels and sway using pretty much all synthesized and gridded out sounds. This song is for standing outside pub at 2 a.m., rain coming down, it’s April fools day. – CW
“Bright Future in Sales” – Fountains of Wayne
Every spring carries with it an inherent sense of optimism. This is gonna be the big year, this is the year it all happens, this is the year I get my shit together. Almost never pans out the way you think, but it’s fun to pretend. I got a “Bright Future in Sales,” baby. – CW
“Under a Stormy Sky” – Daniel Lanois
This song feels like spring up north. The weather is chaotic and awful, yet you notice the birds returning and there is reason to celebrate change. Also, those lines about feeling pulled toward the city resonate with me. Winter where we’re from is pretty isolating, and I associate this time of year with anticipation for summer festivals and baseball games and just being among people again. – Adam Reed
“Light of a Clear Blue Morning” – Dolly Parton
This is a springtime song if I’ve ever heard one. It’s practically perfect, I don’t think I need to explain it. – AR
“To-Do List” – The Felice Brothers
For me, spring always brings an aspirational feeling, more daylight, more possibilities. This song gets right at that manic but euphoric headspace that comes right after thinking, “What the hell was I doing all winter?” – AR
On the album cover for singer-songwriter Katie Gavin’s solo debut album, What A Relief, she sits half-dressed in the middle of her shiny, sage-green bedspread with various clothes and possessions strewn around her and the floor; even the cat stands awkwardly mid-sit or stand, it’s hard to tell. The immediacy of this messy in-between moment conveys the intimacy Gavin reaches to again and again on the album.
I want you to see me When you’re not looking I want you to fuck me When we’re not touching
The album’s opening track, “I Want It All,” exhumes a lust for connection so all-consuming she knows already, “I’m gonna lose my mind / I’m gonna lose…” But it’s also Gavin’s thirst for and attention to these acutely relatable moments of humanity that render the album enticing.
“I’m really hungry for connection. And I think that in putting out songs that express that, or putting out images that express that, and having it met with understanding gives me that experience of like ‘we’re all humans having a human experience,’” Gavin says. “I want to push myself in terms of what I allow other people to see.”
Much of Gavin’s career has been with pop band MUNA (who opened for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour earlier this year). Solo, Gavin sheds her dazzling pop-star persona and the trappings of MUNA’s spectacular auditory and stage presence, retaining their honesty and emotional precision. What A Relief, which was produced by Tony Berg, is a collection of 12 songs Gavin wrote on the side over the past seven years. With them, and a clarity born of self-assurance and yearning for connection, Gavin pulls up a chair to settle in for a heart-to-heart with her audience.
“Some days you do your best / Some days you do what gets you out of bed…” Gavin sings on “Casual Drug Use,” possessing an inscrutable ability to pinpoint reality neatly and poignantly. That realism remains throughout the album, which unfolds as a masterful look at the human condition through the micro view of Gavin’s relationships with the world, herself, and others. Many times, she sounds so thrillingly close to the microphone it’s as if she’s singing right into your ear.
As she winnows down her experiences to a few kernels of truth, Gavin deliberately and deftly seeks accessibility and relatability without catering to weirdness or discomfort simply to make a point. “I am pleased with the same chords, over and over, as long as there’s a story and someone is saying something compelling,” she explains.
Her lack of pretense serves as shorthand for her palpably raw portraits of life: “But I think this is as good as it gets, my love/ I think this is as good as it gets/ Pray to god that you think that it is enough…” she sings in “As Good As It Gets” – which features guest vocals by Mitski – about a relationship that is not always a fairy tale. It’s an acknowledgement that you can both love someone and be underwhelmed by them, at least some of the time.
“‘As Good As It Gets’ reflects this big question that I’ve had for a long time, and I still have about what is reasonable to expect from a romantic relationship. And how good is it supposed to feel?” she says.
Elsewhere on the album, in “Sanitized,” Gavin carefully takes a wet washcloth to the bottoms of her dirty feet, afraid to stain her lover’s clean bed (“I lie perfectly still so I don’t mess up my hair/ I’m a sanitized girl, I clean up for you my dear”); or promises not to stalk her ex online, except “once in a while I’ll wanna know if you’ve died,” as she muses in “Keep Walking.”
Growing up in Illinois, Gavin’s parents gave her free reign to explore music and she gravitated unsurprisingly to pop music, entertaining preteen love for the Spice Girls and Samantha Mumba, and teen obsessions with Riot Grrrl, Gravy Train, and the Weepies’ “Gotta Have You.” She also gravitated toward queer, explicit music (Gavin is queer, but was in the closet at the time). When she started writing her own music as a teenager, her mother introduced her to Imogen Heap and her father stoked her folkie music interests with Jackson Browne and Jim Croce.
Gavin’s broad musical tastes inform her writing of course. In the case of What A Relief, she draws particularly on her love for John Prine’s flawed, human characters, and perverse, weirdo songster Loudon Wainwright III whose Attempted Mustache remains one of Gavin’s favorite albums.
“It’s the same magic that’s in a lot of John Prine songs, where these people aren’t afraid to talk about what real people experience in their real lives, even if it’s really silly, and then really mixing that with the profound.”
Silly mixed with the profound is perhaps the best possible description of Gavin’s own music. In the middle of the album, Gavin drops the bluegrass-folk portrait “Inconsolable,” about generational baggage’s impact on our well-being. Wrapped around a divinely-gratifying fiddle melody (she brought in Nickel Creek’s Sara and Sean Watkins to add a little extra bluegrass cred to the track) the song is first and foremost a reflection on learning to be vulnerable while falling in love.
It’s an experience that feels every bit as familiar as Gavin’s messy bed, but in a way that seems to make sense for the very first time – the gift of a stellar songwriter. More than that though, “Inconsolable” is a study in the way tiny moments elevate Gavin’s songs through her allegiance to the balance between silly and unvarnished experiences. We’ve all curled up on the couch hesitant to show how we’re really feeling.
But I’ve seen baby lizards running in the river When they open their eyes Even though no one taught them how or why So maybe when you kiss me I can let you See me cry And if we keep going by the feeling We can get by
Mid-verse, Gavin pivots from the endearing image of baby lizards learning to swim to emotional vulnerability in a fledgling relationship with the blockbuster realization that salvation and connection again might just come from that blind leap of trust.
Gavin’s quest for an honest examination of emotional intelligence stems in part from time spent with her grandparents, two of whom she lost in the last few years. Soaking up their stories, she thought about how much they endured and how many times older generations weren’t afforded a chance to be heard, or to feel their feelings.
Elders teach both by omission and by passing the torch. In “The Baton,” What A Relief’s anthemic third track, dedicated to the lineage of socially and generationally inherited womanhood, Gavin outlines her understanding of resilience as it passes from mother to daughter. Imagining what she’d say to her own daughter, Gavin also reaches to the wisdom from generations before her:
I’d pass her the baton and I’d say you better run ‘Cause this thing has been going For many generations But there is so much healing That still needs to be done
Not for rebellious reasons, but rather to instill a deep love of self, by the end of the song, Gavin’s come out the other side as her own mother.
“It’s a sense of learning, a sense of ownership and agency and learning to really listen to myself and trust myself, like if I’m going into a situation that I’m nervous about,” she explains. That’s a transformation not unlike her experiences writing the album, which she started when she was 24 and concluded at the age of 31: “You’re kind of moving from this archetype of maiden to mother.”
“I’m aware of a younger part of me that might be nervous and might have needs,” she says. “I often talk to her and say, ‘I got you, you’re coming home with me.’ And, ‘You don’t need to worry that I’m gonna forget about you or give you away to somebody else, or make you tap dance for somebody else.’”
Part of mothering yourself is finding your pitfalls and learning to prevent them. For Gavin, that includes thinking about addiction a lot, well beyond drug use.
“I can get addicted to a lot of different things; I can get addicted to different processes; I can get addicted to people; and I can get addicted to looking at furniture on Facebook marketplace,” she says. “I was thinking about this idea that when we as humans get stuck in the process of addiction, the things that make us feel good, and our actual relationship with the world gets smaller and smaller.”
That idea became the song “Sketches,” wherein Gavin distills addiction into a two-dimensional study of self reduction. In a simple acoustic guitar and cello-accompanied track, she imagines her character reduced to a sketch by an overbearing relationship: “That the deeper I’d go/ The smaller I’d get…” until she takes back control, painting herself back to size.
“The process of recovery has been really one of expansion, learning that I can feel intimacy and connection and pleasure and joy from so many different experiences in life and from so many different people,” Gavin says. “And there’s something that just feels very profound about that for me in this time.”
Even when it comes to writing about climate change, Gavin filters her stories through our relationships to one another. It feels more effective than shaming people for not recycling, she says. In “Sparrow,” she ruminates on the dangers of the quick fix, hoping in vain for the song of a sparrow in spring, only to discover that the tree it would perch on has died of a cure applied rashly and without thinking.
But perhaps Gavin’s most profound relationship moment on the album comes when she eulogizes her dog in “Sweet Abby Girl.”
“She’s taking up most of the mattress/ Can’t imagine being so un-self conscious/ She’s pushing her back up against my legs…” Abby becomes a foil for Gavin’s insecurities, as throughout the song she considers the vulnerability within unqualified love for another being.
Buried late in the album, “Keep Walking,” its penultimate track, reveals Gavin’s raison d’être: “What a relief / To know that some of this was my fault.” Superficially, it’s a breakup song. But it’s also a relief for Gavin’s to put these songs into the world, to share another side of herself, and forge new connections with listeners.
Fundamentally, we get through hard times by laughing with our friends, Gavin says. As she’s matured as a songwriter, she’s been drawn to including those moments of levity in her songs. Invariably, they feel like the best of conversations with friends and lend themselves well to What A Relief’s stripped-down, singer-songwriter format.
“There was just something funny about this idea of putting out this part of me that had up until this point been unexpressed; it does feel like a relief to just let it out,” Gavin says. “I like the sentiment in the song … ‘what a relief to know that some of this was my fault,’ which is just agency. I haven’t behaved perfectly, and that gives me some space to have compassion and forgiveness for you.”
“Real life” is such a tired phrase. Gavin’s version, though, feels scintillatingly, comfortingly relatable, and like her messy bedroom, gives the listener agency to let go and just be, too. What a relief.
Each year, when we begin the process of curating our year-end round-ups with our BGS and Good Country contributors, our prompt is never about superlatives or true “best of year” selections. We don’t strive to craft these lists based on “shoulds” – what record should be considered the best of the year? What should a list of the best bluegrass, old-time, Americana, and folk music include?
We perhaps couldn’t be less interested in such a list. Are they entertaining to read? Oh, yes. There’s almost no better year-end pastime than quickly scrolling through a “best of” list to find if you agree or disagree, or if your favorite album is included, or if your obvious choice is another’s glaring omission. But the beauty of music – especially these more traditional and folkway-adjacent forms – isn’t objectivity; it’s the intricately personal, particular, and subjective that’s hardest to capture.
Still, each year, as fall transitions to winter, we try our best to capture just that. In 2024, we tasked our BGS contributors with collecting their most favorite, most impactful, most resonant, and most persistent albums, songs, and performances. A quick Google search will reveal dozens of collections of the “most important” music of the year, but rather than wading into that very crowded space we hope our BGS Class of 2024 reflects the most ethereal, intangible, and fantastic music we encountered this year.
As such, our Class of 2024 has ended up with a lovely variety of albums and songs spanning the entire, expansive American roots music scene. You’ll hear picks like troubadours Willi Carlisle and Amythyst Kiah, there are straight-ahead grassers like Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, AJ Lee & Blue Summit, and Brenna MacMillan, and we’ve got buzzworthy acts like MJ Lenderman and Katie Gavin represented here, too. It’s not all bluegrass – it’s not any one thing, really! – but we hope you’ll find plenty to love and, hopefully, much exemplary roots music you might not have found anywhere else.
Scroll to find a playlist version of our BGS Class of 2024 below, plus stay tuned for more year-end collections coming your way, including our favorite musical moments, 2024 Good Country, our music book picks for the year, and more. – Justin Hiltner, editor, BGS and Good Country
Willi Carlisle, Critterland
I didn’t catch on to Willi Carlisle until this year, which might be because he’s only just beginning to garner more broad commercial success – or, if I’m being honest, it could be because I mistakenly assumed he was just another white guy with an acoustic guitar and a microphone. But I was wrong.
Carlisle is a rare storyteller, a poet, an openly queer man from the South, and one of the most meticulous folk songwriters releasing music right now. This year, he dropped his third full-length album, Critterland, underlining his status as all of the above and proving he can masterfully weave old-time, country, folk, and honky-tonk influences into a cohesive style all his own. Whether he’s singing about spiritual existentialism, rural queer experiences, or his many meandering journeys across the U.S., Carlisle’s lyricism is captivating, rich, and alive. If you haven’t already listened to Critterland, don’t let the year roll over without doing it. – Dana Yewbank
Jake Xerxes Fussell, When I Am Called
Jake Xerxes Fussell’s version of the work song “Gone to Hilo” on his 2024 album, When I Am Called, is gorgeous. It reveals part of how he revitalizes and contextualizes new folk songs. Fussell is a man of great learning, but he wears it loosely and with pleasure. “Hilo,” the song, has a number of versions – some are about Hawaii and some are about Peru (a town called Ihru). Some are about a sailor named Tommy, others are about someone named Johnny. Usually it’s Johnny in Hawaii and Tommy in Peru; Elijah Wald’s 2024 book about Muddy Waters suggests that it might not be Hilo or Ihru, but “the Hollow,” and could originate from the vernacular of enslaved people.
Fussell, playing live in Toronto, didn’t interpolate the Hollow, but in a perfect three minutes, traded lines and verses, sometimes about one place, sometimes about the other, in a delicate blending of received wisdom. The smartest and most moving moment highlighting what it means to make music that I heard this year. – Steacy Easton
Katie Gavin, What A Relief
For years now I’ve been making an incredibly silly joke about how “MUNA are my favorite bluegrass band.” With her first solo album, the group’s lead singer and central songwriter, Katie Gavin, brings their resplendent and queer musical universe decidedly into our roots music realms. Producer Tony Berg (Nickel Creek, Molly Tuttle, Amythyst Kiah, Andrew Bird) in the control room and Sara & Sean Watkins as session players are just two of the inputs that make What A Relief delightfully folky, fiddley, and string band-infused. MUNA’s acoustic set at the iconic Newport Folk Festival this summer – and Gavin’s totally solo, side stage Newport performance of much of this material – further solidified the dancey, club-ready group as a true folk ensemble.
At first it was a joke, but I don’t think it’s a joke anymore! Like all of Gavin’s work, these songs are both fun and gutting, poignant while light and convivial. What A Relief is a standout for 2024. – Justin Hiltner
Liv Greene, Deep Feeler
Liv Greene is a huge cry baby – and a liar. She even comes right out and admits it on the first line of her new album Deep Feeler:
“I’m aware I’m a liar. Always lying to myself about my expectations/ I’m aware I’m a crier, and I know. All this crying doesn’t help the situation…”
Greene, who is the Deep Feeler in question, has grown tremendously on her sophomore album. She’s become one of the most promising young artists to create songs that tap right into the center of your heart. This is enormously true on her 2024 album through songs like “Wild Geese,” “Flowers,” and “Made it Mine Too.” She attributes that growth to honestly writing about being queer for the first time. Deep Feeler crawls in and stays with you. Who knew honesty could feel this good? – Cindy Howes
Brittany Haas & Lena Jonsson, The Snake
On their second duo album of fiddle tunes (their first, self-titled collab dropped in 2015), Brittany Haas of Nashville and Lena Jonsson of Stockholm went even deeper into what’s possible in the blending of their native countries’ fiddle traditions. This time, they leaned far more on the Swedish end of the collaboration, emphasizing harmony over chord progressions, exploring the possibilities inherent in “second voice” dueting. They also tried their hand at writing a suite in the style of J.S. Bach – no small feat. The result is an utter delight for music geeks and casual fans alike, as folks can appreciate the languid lines and danceable moments they weave together throughout. – Kim Ruehl
Humbird, Right On
I remember where I was the first time I heard Siri Undlin sing, “There is an old barn on a ghost farm / Hollowed out and filled with stars…” the opening couplet of Humbird’s take-no-prisoners roots rocker “Cornfields and Roadkill.” I will reluctantly admit to some initial resentment that a songwriter who wasn’t me had written a song of such poetic efficiency and political potency. Undlin’s songwriting shines throughout the nine tracks of 2024’s Right On: the quiet earnestness of “Quickest Way” would have been at home on an early Kacey Musgraves album, and “Song for the Seeds” lays out both practical and spiritual methods for liberation, Farmer’s Almanac-style. But the palpable chemistry between musicians playing in a room together is the star of the show here. Humbird is an essential band to listen to as we watch the American empire crumble in real time. – Lizzie No
Katelyn Ingardia, “Silence”
This year, Katelyn Ingardia’s “Silence” got me feeling some type of way. I don’t know what they injected into this song, but I’m quite literally addicted to it. Bad day? I’m playing “Silence.” In a long line for coffee? I’m playing “Silence.” Cooking up girl dinner? I’m playing “Silence.” I scream a little on the inside every time I hear the fiddle kickoff.
The timbre of the song is so nostalgic of an early Union Station or Sierra Hull record, but Ingardia’s performance sets herself apart as something completely fresh and original. The writing, delivery, and production are all impeccable and her voice is like honey. And if all that wasn’t enough for ya, Ingardia just dropped her debut record, entitled Getaway. Some of my favorite tracks are “Lost Love” and “Talk to Me.” Y’all keep an eye on this gal as she continues to blossom into her career so we can all say we were here at the beginning. – Bluegrass Barbie
Cris Jacobs, One of These Days
Within the rock and jam realms, the name Cris Jacobs has been well-regarded and sought-out for many years, especially with his early project The Bridge, a vastly popular Baltimore-based rock ‘n’ soul ensemble up and down the Eastern Seaboard in the early 2000s, only to disband in 2011.
But, for the guitar wizard himself, it was Jacobs’ 2024 release, One of These Days, that really catapulted him into the national scene, especially in the Americana, bluegrass, and folk arenas. Produced by Jerry Douglas and featuring the Infamous Stringdusters as its backing band, the album includes appearances by Billy Strings, Lee Ann Womack, Sam Bush, and Lindsay Lou. At its core, One of These Days circles back to Jacobs’ early bluegrass, folk, and blues influences. But, more so, the record finally tells the rest of the world what a lot of us have already known for some time now – Cris Jacobs is one hell of a talented singer, songwriter, and musician. – Garret K. Woodward
Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, I Built A World
The longtime fiddler for Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway shows off captivating songwriting alongside her impeccable playing skills and impressive vocals on I Built A World, her first album in nearly four years. Featuring the likes of Tuttle, Sam Bush, Dierks Bentley, Brit Taylor, and her husband Jason Carter, the 11-song adventure from Keith-Hynes – up for Best Bluegrass Album at the 67th Annual GRAMMYs – follows her journey from being homeschooled to making a living as an independent musician on her own terms.
Standouts range from the frenetic, longing “Will You Ever Be Mine” to the waltz-like, Dobro-heavy “The Last Whippoorwill,” proving that Keith-Hynes is poised to be a power player in bluegrass and country music for years to come. – Matt Wickstrom
Amythyst Kiah, Still + Bright
The sparkling singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah sought a different direction this year for her third solo LP. She’d previously shown her ability to deliver emotionally powerful, socially relevant, and poignant material. But she wanted her music to reflect other aspects of her personality in her latest work, both her warm and humorous side, plus her interest in Eastern philosophy and spirituality. All these things are nicely balanced in Still + Bright, with Butch Walker’s production touches incorporating unexpected musical contributions like nifty pedal steel licks or fuzztone guitar riffs, plus Kiah’s own supportive and inspired banjo colorations and edgy lead vocals.
It was a tour de force that was even more impressive in live performance, and Kiah got rave reviews throughout her tour that included highly appreciative responses from the crowds who saw her performances during Americanafest in Nashville. In addition, Kiah’s been part of Our Native Daughters (an all-women-of-color supergroup also featuring Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell). She extended her collaborative outreach on Still + Bright, working with such co-writers and features as punk legend Tim Armstrong, Sadler Vaden (a guitarist-vocalist for Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit), former Pentatonix member Avi Kaplan, and Sean McConnell (a singer-songwriter who’s also written with Brittney Spencer and Bethany Cosentino). All this reveals a dynamic artist willing to continue exploring new areas, while making some of the year’s most intriguing and exciting music. – Ron Wynn
AJ Lee & Blue Summit, City of Glass
In case you have any doubts about the absolute magnitude of AJ Lee & Blue Summit, I will personally fund your one-way ticket to this transparent metropolis. City of Glass presents precisely what its title suggests – an entire ecosphere generated from its contents. The 12 tracks on this album cultivate a moving array of sensibilities, from tender love ballads to humorous narratives to honeyed poetics to grade-A yodeling. Brimming with multi-hyphenate talents, AJ Lee, Sullivan Tuttle, and Scott Gates all contribute lead vocals and songwriting credits to the compilation. Jan Purat’s fiddling serves as a raconteur, always perfectly delivering each narrative. Tuttle’s sister, Molly, even makes the trip from her City of Gold to join in for a tune. All in all, this album is a wondrous sonic journey that anyone would be remiss not to make! – Oriana Mack
MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks
From Hurricane Helene-ravaged Asheville, North Carolina, singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman has always been more than solid in the field of twangy indie-rock. Nevertheless, he took a quantum leap forward this year with the spectacular Manning Fireworks album, especially the song that falls in the exact middle of the track list. “She’s Leaving You” is the heart of Manning Fireworks, with verses that sketch out a tawdry Las Vegas hookup. But the part that resonates is the chorus, sung by Lenderman in a raw voice that falls somewhere between deadpan and shellshocked: “It falls apart, we all got work to do/ It gets dark, we all got work to do…” Lenderman repeats the line a half-dozen times and you would, too. If ever a chorus summed up the exhausted anguish of a moment in time, it’s this one. – David Menconi
Brenna MacMillan, Dear Life
Bluegrass, as an industry, operates about a decade behind the curve. As such, it feels more than remarkable when you find a straight-ahead bluegrass artist who’s not only on the cutting edge, but may be the actual blade. Brenna MacMillan’s debut solo album, Dear Life, displays all of the ways this picker, songwriter, singer, content creator, and online personality is pushing the trad envelope and establishing new models for success in the genre. Bluegrass has always felt like a direct-to-consumer business, but never with this level of intention – or with such ease on new media and social media.
Dear Life is a gorgeous collection, filled with MacMillan’s Nashville community and several legends, too – like Ronnie McCoury, Peter Rowan, and Sarah Jarosz. It’s down-the-middle bluegrass, but it’s entirely fresh and unique, with engaging songwriting and often surprising contours and melodies. There are many exciting things about MacMillan’s artistry, but the music is the most entrancing of all. – Justin Hiltner
Andrew Marlin, Phthalo Blue
This quietly-released full-length instrumental album from Watchhouse’s Andrew Marlin was far and away the record I found myself returning to over and over again in 2024.
The name Phthalo Blue refers to the family of blue and green pigments most often used in painting (I had to look this up). At first I wondered why Andrew might choose a title so obscure and hard to pronounce, but the more time I spent digging into both the music and the color family, the more they took me to the same calming, centered place.
I have loved all of Andrew’s non-Watchhouse endeavors over the last few years – from his multiple 2021 releases to Mighty Poplar to his recent release, Wild Rose of Morning with Jordan Tice and Christian Sedelmyer. Hopefully he continues to deliver more of this prolific, purely creative output, seemingly unfettered by commercial expectations; simultaneously reverential to the instrumental traditions it pulls from and inherently perfect for our modern age. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Middle Sattre, Tendencies
Middle Sattre are part of a movement of queer artists brewing down in Austin. Their brand of indie folk is as devastating as it is finely crafted. Tendencies is a painful autobiographical work, presenting vignettes of growing up queer and Mormon. The collective navigate these stories with care and delicate musicianship, building a portrait of sorrow – and a determination to survive. This kind of documentation, of people who stay true to themselves no matter the cost, are essential now more than ever. There is a deep and serious artistry in Tendencies, haunting, beautiful, and impossible to forget. – Rachel Cholst
Aoife O’Donovan, All My Friends
It was difficult to imagine what would follow Aoife O’Donovan’s Age of Apathy, her reflection on living through the pandemic. However, with All My Friends, O’Donovan shows how well her creativity and artistic style can thrive in new musical and lyrical territory. I love how this album includes guest artist, orchestral, and choral collaboration, making the music itself feel as grand and complex as the album’s themes: the women’s suffrage movement and one of its leading figures, Carrie Chapman Catt. O’Donovan’s wordplay is as sharp as ever and she doesn’t shy away from historical details or present-day truths, whether celebratory or sobering. The production and arrangements do everything possible to complement and enhance the impact of the songs, even if that means turning everything down to let the implications of O’Donovan’s words sink in. Be prepared to feel so much, but then want to start it all over again. – Kira Grunenberg
Katie Pruitt, Mantras
Katie Pruitt possesses a voice for the ages. In 2020, the powerhouse made an incredible splash with her debut album, Expectations, a raw and cosmic set that drowned out all others. Her songwriting pen proved to be as potent and razor-sharp as her vocal cords. Four years later, Pruitt still defines the soul-crushing Americana genre on her own terms. With Mantras, she expands her musical sensibilities and stretches her creative muscles in impressive ways. Such moments as “Jealous of the Boys” and “Blood Related” serve as needle-prick moments of sheer vulnerability, woven together with her signature mountain-rattling peaks (“All My Friends”). Pruitt pieces together a tattered photo book, one that gives a glimpse into her very soul. – Bee Delores
Photo Credit: Amythyst Kiah by Photography by Kevin & King; Katie Gavin by Alexa Viscius; Bronwyn Keith-Hynes by Alexa King Stone.
I feel like I’ve been living a cottagecore life since always. All my interests outside of music line up: I sew my own clothes, read old Russian literature, and I love horse riding, long forest walks, and filling my house with wild flowers and candles – and dreaming of picnics out of baskets, dressed in long skirts with ribbons in my hair and champagne in tea cups. My upcoming album, There Is No Ship, is a love letter to my homeland, [the UK], where a cottagecore lifestyle is a bit easier to achieve than here in LA. But, here’s a playlist with some songs that make me feel closer to it. – Rose Betts
“Do It Again” – John Mark Nelson
John Mark Nelson and I met at a session and as soon as we got to talking about books I realized he was a total keeper and we’ve been friends since. His vibe is so cottagecore. The man’s car smells like a pine forest and he bakes his own bread. I feel like his voice is so cozy and this song just feels like a day inside with the rain against the windows and pleasant feelings of being in love.
“Snow In Montana” – Michigander
My sister considers it illegal to listen to Christmas songs outside of December, but this has to be an exception. I love this song. On whatever side of Christmas I listen to it, it either makes me wistful about the one to come, or pleasantly melancholic about the one just passed. “Snow In Montana” makes anywhere feel cozy, which is quite a feat if you live in LA. I listen to it in the car on the way home from Trader Joe’s with bags full of vegetables and cheese and flowers feeling all stocked up and ready to light candles and get flower-arranging. I own so many small vases so that I can crowd my house out with flowers and make it feel like a garden.
“Deeper Well” – Kacey Musgraves
Her voice is so smooth and rich, I love it. And, her songs have this warmth and natural quality to them that I just want to sink into. Makes me want to rent a cabin in the woods with friends and get a campfire and hot cider going and watch the sparks fly up into the night.
“Wells” – Joshua Hyslop
I’ve been reading Anne of Green Gables lately and those books are so full of nature and the simple life, they make me really want to run away to Prince Edward Island, pick apples, and make jam. This song has that natural feel, like a little stream you sat by for a while and had a beautiful time, but all the while knew you couldn’t stay forever. Anne as a character is wonderfully joyful, but also so tragic, so the meeting of those two qualities felt expressed in this song somehow.
“Inconsolable” – Kate Gavin
A friend who knows me well sent me this song and I listened on loop for days. I love the instrumentation, that lovely fiddle part! One of my favorite things about being a musician is that when my musician friends come round they just start playing whatever instrument is in the house. The other week my friend came round and our hangout consisted of cups of tea, me sewing a top, and him going through my pile of sheet music on the piano. This song has that feeling of shared music… maybe it’s the harmonies or those lovely melodies, either way it reminds me of impromptu musical moments that are just so lovely.
“Bishops Avenue” – Rose Betts
For about a year and a half, some friends and I had the run of a mansion on Bishops Avenue in North London. We put on plays, painted out in the orchard, had renaissance parties and banquets in the ballroom, and it was one of those golden times when everything is just a little more precious and glittery. I feel like it’s how I always want to live, banquets by candlelight and then some creative frivolity of some kind. Moving to LA, it’s hard to find orchards and dilapidated mansions to play in, but I found some playfellows who get into the spirit with me so I get close.
“Tier Abhaile Riu” – Celtic Woman
This song has such a strong feminine energy to it, reminds me of all my creative friends who enrich my life so much. My friend and I hosted an evening where we invited just women to come and share stories and we lit candles and drank Champagne out of teacups and it was total bliss. Something about women together in candlelight talking feels ancient and holy and special in a way nothing else is.
“Skye Boat Song” – Bear McCreary, Raya Yarbrough
I’m lucky to have a twin who lives in Scotland, so I get to visit a lot and even lived there for a while in lockdown. It’s such an amazing part of the world. There is a beach near her village where I’d go for walks as often as I could, where the seals sing and the sky stretches out like a great pearl above your head. So much of songwriting is about finding the silence in the noise, so that the song has space to blossom and so many songs came from those walks. This song I’ve known since before I could remember hearing it, but it became more well known to the world when they used it as the title track for Outlander. This is a beautiful version. It sounds like Scotland to me, full of low skies and colossal lochs and mystery.
“The Author” – Luz
Some songs are so lovely they make me want to stop listening and write a song instead. This is one of those. I’ve started trying to write a poem every morning, just something small to start my day creatively. Then I punch a hole in the paper and hang it off some fairy lights I have around my bed. I think we are all the authors of our own life, which isn’t what this song is saying, but it’s so darn romantic and in its existence turns the singer into the author that tells the girl how she feels. If that makes sense…
“Sigh No More” – Joss Whedon
I heard this song in Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing and it takes a Shakespeare poem and sets it to music. I always really liked it. I have a little book of Shakespeare’s sonnets that I’ve carried around for years and I’m always trying to learn a new sonnet. If I’m bored at some LA party, I’ll get it out and read a sonnet and it puts me in a better mood.
“The Stars Look Down” – Rose Betts
This is off my first EP and I sound so young, which is kind of embarrassing, but also sweet. It’s like hearing a past version of me. I was reading a lot of Russian literature when I wrote this song and it was the mansion period of my life (which I mentioned before for “Bishops Avenue”). I’d just discovered Tolstoy, was reading War and Peace, and this song is full of the stories and vignettes in that book, heroism and love and dreaming and nights of glory followed by disastrous heartbreak. Books have always been where I get the most inspired for my songs, the quality of the writing makes me work harder at my lyrics.
“Mexico” – The Staves
The Staves are a group of sisters who actually come from a town right by the one I grew up in. It’s a place called Watford and is a bit of grey hole of a place. It’s surprising that these three beautiful singers came out of it. I guess music and beauty can come from anywhere, which is how I feel about my life. There’s beauty in everything, and if there isn’t you can bring it. My little apartment in LA is pretty boxy and lightless, but once you add candles and art and music it’s suddenly a little bohemian enclave where I can rest and be creative. Me and family sing together and there’s nothing like families harmonising, which is why I chose this song. Reminds me of the supper table at my childhood home, where we sing before we eat and sometimes after too, and whatever argument or trouble that’s going on disappears for a moment.
Photo Credit: Catie Laffoon
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