15 Standout Americana and Roots Music Release of 2020 So Far

It's tradition to start every mid-year favorite albums column with some variant on “it's hard to believe half a year has gone by.” But anyone who has lived through 2020 knows it is only hard because it's hard to believe only half a year has gone by. With no live music and barely any social interaction, it feels like 2020 has been about 3 years long. Fortunately, the lack of live music has not deterred the Americana and roots communities from releasing some stellar albums. While these 15 represent my favorites, though not “best” as many other publications insist, because being one person with only two ears, I can't possibly have heard every release, even just in the Americana world. So if your favorite roots release isn't here, there's a good chance I haven't heard it or it might not have grabbed me as much as some others, and trust me, even with 15 I had to cut some stellar releases from American Aquarium, Jim Lauderdale, and John Moreland, and disqualified releases from Corb Lund, and Sugarcane Jane that may make my year-end list simply because they came out so late in June as to not give them a fair shake. So here it is, one humble journalist's favorite roots music albums (including, for the first time, live albums) of 2020 so far. Feel free to let me know yours in the comments. Where we've reviewed the album, I've linked it in the title. Otherwise, I've added a Youtube link to a favorite song.

15. Nate Lee- Wings of a JetlinerBecky Buller Band mandolinist and IBMA Award winner Nate Lee decided to take a break from his main gig to record and release a solo album, though you'd be forgiven for not noticing since almost all of his bandmates make an appearance. The biggest difference is the solo album gives Lee license to experiment with Western swing, jazz, and even a bluegrassed up cover of The Offspring's punk rock anthem “All Along.” The result is a playful but no less masterfully performed album from a criminally under-known mandolin prodigy.

14. Marcus King Band- El DoradoYet another Nashville discovery from The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound. Marcus King has been performing his rock guitar gymnastics in and around Nashville for years, but El Dorado is the true coming out party. With Auerbach's '70s aesthetic to back him up, King delivers a deliciously retro letter of love to the soul-tinged Southern guitar rock of Muscle Shoals. King's bluesy guitar work and leathery voice make you wonder if he's going to spontaneously sprout a giant beard and become the 4th member of ZZ Top.

13. Antsy McClain- 15 Songs from IsolationAnyone familiar with the work of Antsy McClain will not be surprised that he's one of the first to come out of the COVID lockdowns with a studio album of originals, many themed around the isolation of the time. Always a fast writer and a DIY artist used to producing his own content from his home studio, McClain delivers an album full of wit and philosophy about the good, the bad, and the boredom of being stuck at home with your family for months on end.

12. Teddy Thompson- Heartbreaker PleaseThe son of British folk gods Richard and Linda Thompson, you might think that Teddy's music would be steeped in the tradition of Fairport Convention or even Lonnie Donegan. Instead, Heartbreaker Please pays homage to early rock and roll, rockabilly, and doo wop. The set of songs about breakups, self-doubt, and a world that has moved on without him are some of Thompson's strongest lyrics yet, and an album worth multiple listens.

11. Della Mae- Headlight Della Mae, despite numerous lineup changes, has been one of the more consistently good acts in roots music, and one that was not afraid to get political long before Donald Trump sparked the strongest protest music movement since the '60s. On Headlight, the band keeps to the style that brought them to success. The title track is a defiant battle cry against a society that “slut-shames” victims of sexual abuse. The gospel-tinged “Change” strikes a more positive tone, reminding that a change from the oppression and hate is coming if the young of America will it. It also features The McCrary Sisters, who alone are worth the price of admission.

10. Secret Emchy Society- The ChaserSome people hear about the “Queer Country” movement and think all of the songs are either going to all be about gay romances or political statements. But that's not the case. Instead, Queer Country is simply a reminder that you can be out and included in country music, despite what the ultra-conservative country establishment wants. One of the best examples is Secret Emchy Society's The Chaser. It's as hard living, hard drinking, and hard fighting as any outlaw country album, it just happens to be made by an out artist. Put album highlight “Whiskey Fightin' Terri” on any country dive bar jukebox rotation and it would be celebrated without anyone knowing any different. Which is the point. Who you love doesn't make your art, and The Chaser is pure art for anyone who loves rowdy classic country drawl.

9. Margo Price- Perfectly Imperfect at the RymanI usually limit my list of favorites to studio albums, but the release of Margo Price's Perfectly Imperfect, culled from her three-night Ryman residency in 2018, is something that has been a bit of a “holy grail” for fans that it had to be included. In addition to live renditions of her outstanding album cuts, the set also captures the guest appearances during the shows, including the person who “discovered” Price and gave her a label debut on Third Man, Jack White, a friend from their days of toiling in relative obscurity, Sturgill Simpson, and the absolute queen of Americana, Emmylou Harris.

8. X- AlphabetlandThis is the point where someone says “Wait! X is a punk band!” Yes. Yes they are. But even in the '70s they had a fairly pronounced rockabilly backbone and, since founding members John Doe and Exene Cervenka have both gone almost purely Americana in their solo work, the influences on their new album Alphabetland is even more pronounced, with the group losing none of their snarling punk fury, but introducing more Carl Perkins-style guitar licks in the background. The saying “there are no old punk rockers” have never seen X. They're as good, if not better, than they ever were.

7. Whitney Rose- We Still Go to RodeosWe Still Go to Rodeos is Whitney Rose's declaration of independence. Free from labels, fully solo writing, and co-producing for the first time, the Canadian-born Austin transplant retains the core of her “Lesley Gore meets Bobbie Gentry” sound while experimenting with wailing guitar rock on some tracks. Here, Rose truly finds her voice, penning slice of life vignettes about scorned lovers, judgmental small towns, and the joys of simple pleasures, it's her most mature offering yet, and one that should be on any Americana lover's shelf.

6. Sawyer Fredericks- Flowers For YouIt's hard to think of anyone with several hundred thousand Facebook followers as “criminally underrated”, but Sawyer Fredericks gained his fame when he won The Voice in 2016 and, while he has retained a loyal following, likely confused a lot of people when he walked away from the folk-pop label world to follow his heart into what he likes to call “free range folk.” On Flowers for You, Fredericks takes the next step in his evolution with an album that, for the first time, doesn't feel like a Sawyer Fredericks solo album with a band of hired hands, but a fully realized band album recorded with his touring group. Everyone gets their time to shine but at the core is Fredericks' gravelly wail, which he uses perfectly for his soulful and often mournful folk, but also puts to good use here with some rockers. He even gets a bit political with the album's best track, “Call It Good”, which fires a howitzer level of venom at the corporate structure that throws perfectly good food away rather than donate it or discount it while so many people live with almost nothing.

5. Jake Blount- Spider TalesWhile, since it's at #5, there were albums I liked better, if I were to list the most important albums of 2020, Spider Tales would be #1. As an openly gay black man who loves roots music, Blount has three strikes against him in the mainstream and, from the songs on Spider Tales, named for an African trickster god whose tales often championed the powerless over the powerful, he could not care less. Mining musical archives both for old songs in the black string band tradition (further cementing that the banjo IS an African instrument appropriated by white people), but also songs made famous by white musicians who learned them from black artists. Jake Blount has emerged as his generation's most important musical historian, following in the footsteps of Dom Flemons and Rhiannon Giddens in making history fun to listen to.

4. Jill Andrews- ThirtiesWhile Jill Andrews may just be ending her thirties, she's been a veteran musician for over 20 years, founding the outstanding The Everybodyfields while still a teenager. With Thirties, Andrews releases a loose concept album, looking at various reality checks experienced on her trip through adulthood, a time when, as a kid, she assumed “people at this age had it together.” Instead, you get songs from starting over after a broken marriage to the realize that the march of time is taking your children and turning them into little adults before your eyes. Jill Andrews' angelic voice alone would have earned it a spot on this list, but the songs that resonate with this person well into his own trip through the forties, speak to me in a way few others this year have. Whatever her age, Jill Andrews continues to be as much a treasure as she ever was when she was a teenager.

3. Tami Neilson- Chickaboom!For the first four and a half months of 2020, Chickaboom was my runaway #1 album. It took releases from two of Americana's most consistent megastars to knock it down to 3. But that makes it no less great. The Canada-raised New Zealander has a firmer grasp on the very American rockabilly genre than almost anyone in roots music today. The absolute power of Neilson's voice on Chickaboom doesn't so much fill a room as slam into it with the force of a concussion grenade. The album's themes run from a relationship blow-off to musings from a mother who seems to have to do all the work at home to putting commercial country on blast for refusing to play women. Saying Tami Neilson is something special doesn't really do her justice by half. Tami Neilson is something otherworldly. She may not be the rockabilly hero an inappropriately appreciative populace deserves, but she's the rockabilly hero we have gotten, and for that every roots music fan should be thankful.

2. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit- Reunions/Reunions Live at Brooklyn Bowl NashvilleI'm kind of cheating by putting two albums here but since this is my list I can do that kind of thing. Besides, the two albums are really all of the same songs. Reunions is Jason Isbell doing what Jason Isbell does best, putting words to universal feelings and emotions that are difficult to explain. He also continues his sketches of fictional characters that, in 3.5 minutes, are more fully realized than many movie or television stars. From a man struggling with sobriety even after years of it to a killer who relates his turbulent life to the river that flows through his hometown to the strident call to social action that delivers the album's best line, “If your words add up to nothing then you're making a choice to sing a cover when we need a battle cry.” For those looking for a more stripped-down version of the songs, the recording of Isbell's album release show at an empty Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, featuring only him on acoustic guitar and wife and 400 Unit bandmate Amanda Shires on fiddle, is a delight, and wisely includes all of the flubs and missteps present in the live performance, including Isbell messing up a transition and asking Shires to go back and pick up the solo so he can try again.

1. Sarah Jarosz- World on the GroundThis is the first time since Southeastern that Isbell hasn't been my #1 album. That could change by year's end as this was really more of a 1/1a thing, but for now the always sublime Sarah Jarosz takes the top spot with her most mature album yet, World on the Ground. It's sometimes hard to remember that Jarosz, over a decade into her career, is only 29. With every album she grows. Here, she sings less personal songs and more character portraits and, aided by the masterful production of John Leventhal, delivers an album that is addictively listenable.