20 Standout Americana and Roots Albums From 2019, Part 2

It's that time of year again, when every music critic trots out his or her “best of” list. This isn't that. As I said in the first half of this list, which you can find here, I'm not a fan of “bests” simply because, even limiting myself to Americana and roots music, there are hundreds of albums released and I, having only two ears through which to listen, can't possibly hear them all. Instead, the 20 albums contained in last week's list and this one represent a list of not only the albums that most stuck with me in 2019, but also stuck out to me in some way. Where we reviewed the album, I have attached a link to the full review if you wish to read more. Where we didn't, I have attached a Youtube link to a song that I feel best captures the feel of the album as a whole. Please let me know your favorites in the comments and maybe I'll find something my two overworked ears missed!

10. Amy Speace- Me and the Ghost of Charlemagne
As one might expect from an album title that name-checks a first-century Roman emperor, Amy Speace's Me and the Ghost of Charlemagne has a lot of heft. But that's common for Speace, who is one of Nashville's most literate, and at times literary, songwriters. From pondering a limited time to realize your dreams on the title track to dealing with feelings of inadequacy on “Pretty Girls” to a lonely moment in a waiting room for a girl making a life changing decision on “Ginger Ale and Lorna Doones”, Me and the Ghost of Charlemagne consistently zigs where other writers would zag, finding the dark crevices of ordinary life and mining them for all they're worth.

9. Boo Ray- Tennessee Alabama Fireworks
Every couple of years, some publication looking for cheap page views will pen an article lamenting the “death of the guitar.” The fact that they have to do this every couple of years tells you something about the accuracy of those predictions. In any case, if the guitar is dead someone forgot to tell Boo Ray, whose Tennessee Alabama Fireworks is a good old fashioned Southern rock electric guitar romp. But hidden in those feel good rock licks are some spot on observations about our plugged in culture, the loss of loved ones to addiction, and the hazards of life on the road. But if you don't want to ponder the weight of life, Tennessee Alabama Fireworks can easily be enjoyed as an Allman Brothers-esque beefy rock album that's as explosive as its title.

8. Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi- There Is No Other
Any year when Rhiannon Giddens, the best pure vocalist in roots music today (and possibly ever), lands at #8, you know it's a great year for music. In reality, Giddens landed two albums on this list, one you'll read about much higher up. But that doesn't in any way slight Giddens' work with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, masterfully produced by Joe Henry. In a time when politicians are using the “Other”, whether it be race, ethnicity, nationality, or sexuality, Giddens and Turrisi prove the thesis of their album's title by melding Giddens' explorations of the African American folk traditions with Turrisi's Mediterranean rhythms. Their styles mesh beautifully, both on traditionals like the oft-covered and retooled “Wayfaring Stranger” to Oscar Brown's “Brown Baby” to Giddens' co-write with Henry “I'm on My Way”, There Is No Other is a celebration of music's borderless ability to unite.

7. Joanie and Matt- Sterling
Sterling is easily the most overlooked roots album of the year. That fact doesn't surprise me. A premise of a Jewish folk band doing retellings of Old Testament stories likely was dismissed as “too strange” by some people and “worship music” by others. More's the pity for them because they missed out on some of the smartest songwriting of 2019. On every single track, Joanie Leeds and Matthew Check find new ways to look at these thousands of year old stories, and connect them to our modern life in a way that is both respectful to the source material and more inclusive. “Coming Up” reframes the tale of Jonah as one of emerging from depression. “It Ain't Paradise” casts Adam and Eve in a “Who's Gonna Take the Garbage Out” argument duet. And, most devastatingly, the album's title track takes the biblical story of Tamar, raped by her brother and silenced by her father for the “good of the kingdom” and mirrors every modern woman who was quiet about a rape or sexual harassment just to “keep the peace.”

6. Che Apalache- Rearrange My Heart
A lot of roots musicians have written songs about immigration in the past few years. But few have as much skin in the game as Che Apalache, the quartet made up of an American, two Argentinians, and a Mexican. That might explain why the two over immigration songs on Rearrange My Heart are so effective. “The Dreamer” transports the DACA debate to the hills of North Carolina to tell the real story of Moises Serrano, who came to America as a baby and now risks being deported because “dreaming is forbidden.” “The Wall” is a gospel-style a capella number that is more direct, with lines like “if that nonsense does come true then we'll have to knock it down.” With banjo god Bela Fleck as producer, the rest of Rearrange My Heart so deftly blends traditional Appalachian melodies with Argentinian folk songs and even some traditional Japanese music that you don't really notice until you dig deep into the songs.

5. Sturgill Simpson- Sound & Fury There's an argument to be made that, with Sound & Fury, Sturgill Simpson has strayed so far afield that he no longer fits in the “Americana” or “roots music” categories. I'm not buying it. Rather, Simpson has once again done what he's been doing since he debuted, redefining what roots music means. Simpson and I are of a similar age, so when I hear flashes of Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, AC/DC, and The Outlaws throughout Sound & Fury, I hear the music that flooded out of my car stereo speakers when I was a teen. Possibly not Carter Family roots music, but just as grounding to our generation as they were to previous ones. So is Sound & Fury an Americana album? I don't care, and I suspect Simpson cares even less than I do. But it's a great album, and in places (such as “Best Clockmaker on Mars” or “Make Art Not Friends”) next level. Sound & Fury is the living embodiment of Steppenwolf's “heavy metal thunder” and I am all in.

4. The Highwomen- The Highwomen
Sure, The Highwomen are a band, and a hell of a talented one consisting of Grammy and Americana award magnets Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. But it's also a challenge. Seeing the dearth of women on mainstream country radio, the quartet recorded one hell of a high quality album filled with stories of strong women, vulnerable women, and world building women and dared Nashville's establishment to ignore them. Mostly they have, but the rest of the roots music world has taken notice. Nowhere is the challenge seen more than on the album's title track, a regendering of Jimmy Webb's “The Highwayman” (with the author's blessing), which reframes the narrative from individual reincarnation to a collective reincarnation, with generations of women rising on the shoulders of their ancestors. Elsewhere you have “Redesigning Women”, which has a lot of fun playing with female stereotypes (“changing our minds like we change our hair color.”), and the duality of the touching ballad of motherhood “My Only Child” with the reality check of “My Name Can't Be Mama Today.” Who knows if The Highwomen will make it to a second album, considering the individual success of its members, but I for one hope it continues to reincarnate every few years to remind radio programmers that we're still watching.

3. Molly Tuttle- When You're Ready
As a lifelong metalhead, I have used the word “beast” to describe a number of guitarists. I have never used it to describe an acoustic bluegrass picker... until now. Molly Tuttle is a Beast, capital B well earned. The things Tuttle can do with a single acoustic guitar has to be seen to assure yourself she doesn't have two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. Her full length debut, When You're Ready has plenty of jaw-dropping guitar licks, such as “Take the Journey”, but there is much to impress vocally as well. From a breathy delivery on “Sleepwalking” to the gentle amble of “Million Miles” to the powerful chorus of “Light Came In (Power Went Out)”, Molly Tuttle has proven herself much more than just a Beast of a guitar picker.

2. Our Native Daughters- Songs of Our Native Daughters
Our Native Daughters is Rhiannon Giddens' second album on this list. But, with Our Native Daughters, she doesn't have to do all of the heavy lifting. Instead Giddens recruited fellow musicians Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell, and Leyla McCalla for an even deeper dive into the African American folk tradition than even Giddens' impressive work with Carolina Chocolate Drops and her solo work. Kiah's soulful blues coax the most out of album highlights “Black Myself” and “Polly Ann's Hammer”, a rewrite of the John Henry legend that ends with Polly Ann realizing that, only when she throws the hammer away, can she truly be free. Russell's smooth gentleness drives home both the horror and hope of “Quasheba Quasheba”, about a women sold into slavery whose descendants look upon their own success and draw from her strength. McCalla exudes peace on “I Knew I Could Fly.” And the quartet blend their voices beautifully on the call-and-response “Mama's Crying Long” and “Moon Meets Sun.” But it is Giddens who gets the most heartbreaking moment, with “Barbados”, consisting of bookending poems, one offering excuses for slavery, the other offering the same excuses for the child labor and wage slavery that goes into our own clothing and electronics.

1. Yola- Walk Through Fire
When I first saw Yola (then Yola Carter) in the back yard of a record shop during Americanafest 2016, I wrote (for a now defunct publication) that she was one full-length album away from being Americana's next big thing. But not even I could have predicted that, with The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach at the producer's helm to accentuate her '70s soul influences, she would make an album so impactful as Walk Through Fire. From the album's first track, the speaker-blowing vocal powerhouse “Faraway Look”, Yola takes no prisoners, and honors no genre's borders. The easiest description for Yola is she might be what happened if someone made a genetic hybrid of Dolly Parton, Roberta Flack, and Dusty Springfield, but not even that does her justice. The British-born artist puts a bit of a twang into the album's title track, but lets guest vocalist Vince Gill provide the twang for the countrypolitan “Keep Me Here.” She even flirts with proto-disco on yet another throat killer, “Lonely the Night.” No album even came close to spending as much time in my rotation as Walk Through Fire, but if I put it on right now I'd still hear something I missed the other 300 times. It's an album that isn't just going to dominate 2019, but is going to be seen as a game changer for a generation of roots musicians.