AMERICANA ATTRACTIONS

Norman Warwick looks at some

AMERICANA ATTRACTIONS

Debates about what’s good in country music and its close cousin, Americana, often revolve around one primary consideration: authenticity. Purists hunt for evidence that a musician has the proper bona fides to represent the kind of music they’re making. Are they “real,” or just poseurs with a heart-worn voice and a b-bender Telecaster? It’s a silly construct, because at best, authenticity is a moving target, an inkblot test that says more about the person making the judgments than about the judged.

A big part of the problem is that notions of authenticity tend to be rooted in nostalgia. Yet holding up an idealized vision of the past as a benchmark of quality or purity can drag in fraught subtext on a host of other topics, including class status and out-dated world-views—“that same white male narrative,” as Jason Isbell (left) put it in a recent BuzzFeed story about country music and the lure of white nostalgia. Embracing that narrative, and gazing backward at some fictionalized soft-focus yesteryear, blinds us to the fullness of the present—and 2021 has been plenty full.

Forget about the clown with the mullet who dominated too much of the discourse this year with that drunken racial slur. It’s better to remember that revered elders like Gary Allan, Alan Jackson (right) and James McMurtry returned from long absences with well-received new albums. Or that pop-country produced a cohort of exciting young performers, including Morgan Wade and Carly Pearce. Mid-career singers including Rhiannon Giddens, Lilly Hiatt and Pokey LaFarge continued building enviable bodies of work with new releases highlighting their distinctive corners of roots music.

This was also a year that brought to the forefront artists who have not traditionally seen themselves well represented in the country and Americana worlds, including Joy Oladokun, Amythyst Kiah and Brittney Spencer. Not all of them released albums this year, but their dedication to making music on their own terms demonstrates that there’s so much more than the white-male narrative that served for too long as the default perspective.

Wouldn’t you know it, making room for a wider, richer array of viewpoints also made for a more stimulating musical conversation in 2021, one that informed many of the best Americana and country albums this past year. Here are 10 that stood out most to us.

Listen to Paste’s Best Country & Americana Albums of 2021 playlist on Spotify here.

Adia Victoria (left) doesn’t just have a way with words, she’s a storyteller. Anchored in the present, yet steeped in the history and literature of an inclusive South, Victoria has a sharp eye for detail that informs the songs on A Southern Gothic. They’re marvels of concise narrative, whether her protagonists are seeking their roots on Magnolia Blues, claiming their own identities on Deep Water Bluesor reflecting on (someone else’s) mortality on You Was Born to Die which features Kyshona Armstrong, Jason Isbell and Margo Price. Though Victoria is sometimes described as a blues musician, that’s really just a starting point. She’s a musical polyglot who knows her way around folk, spooky vintage country and indie rock (Matt Berninger of The National duets on album closer “South for the Winter”), synthesizing all of her influences into a sound that is uniquely, distinctly her own. —Eric R. Danton

Sidetracks And Detours wrote about Allison Russell (right) and her work with Po’ Boy and Birds Of Chicago. suggesting that Allison Russell makes music worth hearing and Outside Child, her solo debut, cinches it.

With melodies that linger, Outside Child is the work of an old soul: It’s an assured and subtle collection of songs that draws on folk, country and gospel. Russell can be enigmatic and metaphorical, as on Nightflyer, or direct and almost painfully straightforward when she worries about ´All of the women / Who disappear´ on All Of The Women.´ Russell’s voice is warm, and while her vocals never lack for feeling, she sings with a restraint that draws listeners in closer to catch the nuance in her lyrics and delivery. —Eric R. Danton

Now that Brandi Carlile (left) has become a big star who plays iconic venues across the country, writes a New York Times bestselling memoir, wows a star-studded audience at the Grammys, forms super-groups, and collaborates and duets with her heroes, she faced the challenge of making an album, In These Silent Days, that met her high standards and showcased artistic growth while retaining all the things people love about her music. In These Silent Days stares down that challenge with her typical, collected confidence. With her talent and charisma, and a group of talented musicians around her, it’s no wonder Carlile is the star she was always meant to be, and there’s certainly nothing about In These Silent Days that will stop her rise. —Ben Salmon

Sidetracks And Detours have long been aware of the high lonesome sounds produced by The Felice Brothers (right). Writing of them in this Paste appraisal, Eric Danton paid them their full rewards.

Leave it to the Felice Brothers to find equal measures of beauty and absurdity in America’s slide toward the abyss. A requiem for a culture staggering under the weight of its own contradictions, the group’s eighth album is by turns pointed and impressionistic. Singer Ian Felice is at his best, with lyrics that balance lacerating, often deadpan social commentary with introspection, and the band plays together with loose-limbed connectivity: New drummer Will Lawrence powers Jazz On The Autobahn” and Money Talks with resonant, thumping beats, while aching piano accompanies Felice’s weary vocals on Be At Rest and mixes with acoustic and electric guitars on the mesmerizing, eight-minute album closer We Shall Live Again, which leaves a glimmer of hope winking in the gathering darkness. —Eric R. Danton

We have often spoken well here on our blog pages at Sidetracks And Detours of Miranda Lambert, and I have also been reminded of Jack Ingram in the book I have just read called Without Getting Killed or Caught the story of Guy and Susana Clark and Townes Van Zandt which we reviewed under the title of Wholly Trinity. The piece is still available in our easy to navigate highlights dated on 22^nd December 2021. It is interesting to learn, then, that Jack Ingram and Miranda Lambert have formed a trio with another excellent song-writer in Jon Randall:

Their album, The Marfa Tapes, is described by Mr. Danton as a ´stripped-down, spellbinding collaboration among country superstar Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram and Jon Randall—journeymen singers who are her frequent writing partners—The Marfa Tapes strips 15 songs down to their essence. The trio recorded them with a couple of microphones and acoustic guitars, often outside, where they were immersed in the sounds of the West Texas desert. The songwriting is first-rate, and the minimalist aesthetic suits these tunes in a way that more elaborate arrangements and polished production never would. The Marfa Tapes started as a passion project among friends, and turned out to be a showcase for Lambert’s versatility while shining a light on Ingram and Randall’s skill as writers, singers and players. —Eric R. Danton

Danton also praises Mickey Guyton and urges us, in the name of her album, to Remember Her Name.

It’s been a long road for Mickey Guyton (left), who spent the better part of a decade trying to be the artist she thought the Nashville country establishment wanted her to be. When that approach resulted in a whole lot of nothing much, she remembered to trust her own instincts and be the artist she wanted to be. The initial result is Remember Her Name a big, bold album with a polished sound that’s unmistakably—but not exclusively—country. Guyton is a versatile singer who is as capable of power as restraint, and she handles the weighty topical themes on opener “Remember Her Name” as comfortably as the more romantic fare on “Dancing in the Living Room.” She’s neither shy, nor apologetic about singing from a perspective that’s not often heard in mainstream country: Songs including “Black Like Me” and “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” are insightful and powerful reminders that there is (or should be) room for everybody in country music. —Eric R. Danton

Not only is Riddy Arman (right) a consummate musician but she also still works as a ranch hand. This, with her austere voice and sparse arrangements, helps her produce a sound as lonesome as the rugged Montana landscape that can be heard where she works.

Her debut runs just shy of 30 minutes, but there’s no filler here. Arman doesn’t seem like the type to waste a moment. She writes from a deep well of emotion—country songs don’t get more gutbucket than Too Late to Write a Love Song or Half a Heart Keychain—but she never wallows, facing down the hard moments with a bracing, plainspoken sensibility. The songs on Riddy Arman are unadorned, yet she conjures a vivid, lived-in aesthetic that’s lean, raw and utterly spellbinding. —Eric R. Danton

We reviewed Raise The Roof in our Sidetracks And Detours pages in an article called In Silent Harmony in November 2021. We acknowledge that Mr. Danton and the organisation at Paste have no need to follow our items in the way that we follow theirs, but his review and ours show that ins some ways we are on the same page.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ (left) second LP together reflects a wide range of music as they corral American folk, country and R&B songs, along with a few British folk selections that Plant knew from way back. With vocal parts that merge and intertwine as if Plant and Krauss are each half of the same soul, the singers fully inhabit these songs. Though the song selection throughout is top-notch, it’s a disparate enough group of tunes that Raise the Roof would be eclectic, if it weren’t for the way Plant and Krauss make these songs their own. —Eric R. Danton

Sarah Jarosz: The Blue Heron Suite

Not having heard her music at that stage, I was delighted to be steered by Eric Danton to the Texas-born Nashville transplant, Sarah Jarosz (right)

She delivers rustic elegance on The Blue Heron Suite, her sixth full-length album. Though you wouldn’t guess it from smart, understated instrumentation that blends acoustic (and the occasional electric) guitar, violin and mandolin, the album is a sort of travelogue through uncertainty as Jarosz examines unsettled feelings following her mom’s 2017 cancer diagnosis and the damage inflicted the same year by Hurricane Harvey on Port Aransas, Texas, where her family used to go on vacation. The music drapes itself loosely around Jarosz’s voice, an instrument at once earthy and light, and her songs seep slowly into your consciousness until it seems as if they’ve always been there. —Eric R. Danton

The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, is exactly what it says on the label. Now I can add the name of Valerie June to what I feared at the time was a dwindling list of female singer-writers preserving American standards. I discussed my fears in print with Sidetracks And Detours reader, and occasional dispenser of good advice, Peter Pearson in article called Will The Circle be Unbroken in November 2021 and he immediately reassured me that there were plenty of good female singer-writers coming through

Valerie June is certainly one of them, and now I read from Eileen Johnson´s piece in the Paste round-up that Valerie dances ´among celestial bodies most of us could only dream of touching´. But this time she seems to have answered the question Is There A Light? firmly for herself. There is light—so much of it—and June, with help from former Kendrick Lamar producer Jack Splash, seems determined to scatter that light as far and wide as humanly possible. The hip-hop sensibilities of Splash combined with June’s breezy soul create an otherworldly effect, blending folk and country with gospel and rock, while still leaving room for June’s reggae spirit. She uses the album as a chance to wield hope and joy as tools in the battle of persistence. —Ellen Johnson

please note logo The primary source for this article was written by Eric Danton and his excellent colleagues and published on line at the always authentic Paste magazine.

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This article was collated by Norman Warwick, a weekly columnist with Lanzarote Information and owner and editor of this daily blog at Sidetracks And Detours.

Norman has also been a long serving broadcaster, co-presenting the weekly all across the arts programme on Crescent Community Radio for many years with Steve, and his own show on Sherwood Community Radio. He has been a regular guest on BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Radio 4.

As a published author and poet he was a founder member of Lendanear Music, with Colin Lever and Just Poets with Pam McKee, Touchstones Creative Writing Group (where he was creative writing facilitator for a number of years) with Val Chadwick and all across the arts with Robin Parker.

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