Concerthopper's 20 Favorite Americana Albums of 2021: 20-11
It's that time of year again, when every music journalist pads out his December by releasing annual “best of” lists, While some hate them (often artists who are not on them), I've always found them to be a good way to catch up with some releases I missed and to hear others' thoughts on my own list. I do, however, not care for the ubiquitous “best” labels. Even keeping to the Americana genre, there are far too many releases for even the broadest publication to have heard them all. For a site as small as this one, where I am essentially a one-man album review team, my two ears can't possibly hear even a fraction of the year's releases. So, instead, let call this my favorites; the albums among those I did hear that stood out in some way. 20 of them to be exact. Today, I'll cover 11-20 while revealing my Top 10 next week. Where we reviewed the album, I've included a link to the full review. Where we didn't, I've linked a Youtube video of a standout track.
A note on methodology: To keep the list somewhat manageable, I have excluded live albums and covers-only albums, which is why you won't see Jason Isbell or Molly Tuttle on here, nor any of Isbell or Aoife O'Donovan's excellent pandemic live releases, though all are deserving of your time.
20. Swift Silver- Swift Silver
The duo of Anna Kline and John Looney, who were formerly known as bluegrass act Grits & Soul, have rebranded themselves Swift Silver and, on their self-titled debut, shift their sound beyond bluegrass and into the realms of Southern rock, soul, and gospel. The result is a road trip to Muscle Shoals with a stop off in Kentucky and Nashville on the way down. The album's highlight is an electric guitar enhanced cover of The Stanley Brothers' bluegrass mainstay “The Fields Have Turned Brown.”
19. Tommy Womack- I Thought I Was Fine
Tommy Womack has never made secret his discomfort with the word “Americana” being attached to his work, this despite the fact that his bands Government Cheese and The Bis-Quits were among the early Nashville rock acts that laid the foundation Americana was built on. For his new album, I Thought I Was Fine, Womack goes hard into his rock and roll roots, continuing his career-long to refuse to couch trauma in pretty words, instead laying them sometimes uncomfortably bare on songs like “Call Me Gary” while retaining a keen sense of humor on his update of “A Little Bit of Sex”, which finds an aging rocker longing not for a post-show orgy of groupies but a quiet evening in his bed.
18. Tim Easton- You Don't Really Know Me
Tim Easton has long been a treasure of Nashville's club scene, one we've selfishly kept mostly to ourselves. With You Don't Really Know Me, Easton is going to force us to reluctantly share our best secret with the world. In his familiar roots rock drawl, Easton gets topical on “Son My Son,” noting that the arrests, profiling, and brutality experienced by white people during the Black Lives Matter protests are the kinds of things their black brothers and sisters experience daily. Another standout is “Festival Song,” which any dedicated festie will immediately know identifies Easton as one of us as he lays out the joys and kinship felt by being surrounded by 50,000 of your best friends for three days in a field.
17. Todd Snider- First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder
When Todd Snider opened his career-defining album East Nashville Skyline with the lines “my new stuff is nothing like my old stuff was, and neither one is much when compared to the show”, he showed an awareness of the road taken by long-time rockers and their frustrated fans who want everything to sound exactly like that one they heard on the radio. While it is very true that no Todd Snider album ever approaches the humor of his live shows, First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonders continues to reward folks who stuck around for his stylistic shifts with songs like “Handsome John”, about his friend and former boss John Prine, and “Agnostic Preacher's Lament”, about a televangelist who pleads with a god he isn't even sure he believes in for his followers' simple hopes to “live forever, never die”, and also to make the uncomfortable question of where all the money they sent was used go away.
16. Valerie June- Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers
Valerie June has been underappreciated for a long time, even as she collected admirers like Bob Dylan and The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach. Considering how many year end lists her new album Moon and Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers is popping up on, that underappreciation may be at and end. June's otherworldly voice is enhanced through psychedelic flourishes and shimmering production from Jack Splash, best known for his work with Kendrick Lamar, that gives the “dreamers” portion of the album's title weight.
15. Willie Nile- The Day the Earth Stood Still
Even in the middle of a deadly, and unfortunately politicized, global pandemic, it's hard not to have fun when listening to the Mayor of Greenwich Village dish pure old fashioned CBGB vintage garage rock and roll. Even when he's topical, such as describing the desolation of pandemic locked down New York streets on the album's title track or celebrating the life of civil rights fighter John Lewis with “The Justice Bell: Hear It Ring,” Willie Nile is always fun. He has cracked the code on something few artists have; translating the sheer joy of performing to a studio album.
14. Nobody's Girl- Nobody's Girl
The trio of Texas ladies who make up Nobody's Girl; Betty Soo, Rebecca Loebe, and Grace Pettis, all have successful solo careers. But when the stars align (and the pandemic doesn't have us all grounded), they come together to write and record music filled with smart hooks and harmony so airtight there is no light between them. After releasing one EP, the trio came together in 2021 to release their first full-length album which turns the “badly behaving husband” country trope around with “Rescued,” a call for political healing in “The Great Divide,” and an album capping cover of Carole King's “So Far Away.”
13. Hayes Carll- You Get It All
My first show back as venues began to cautiously map out a safe return to live music in late 2020 was Hayes Carll. After the first song, Carll got emotional during the applause, admitting how much he'd missed the interaction. That driving need to fully participate in the human race drives You Get It All. The title track is a tender, if frank, declaration of love for his wife, fellow Americana star Allison Moorer. “Nice Things” finds God visiting Earth to survey humanity, only to see them squander, if not downright slander, the gifts she gave. As she reminds us in each chorus, like a scolding mother, “this is why y'all can't have nice things.” But the album's out of the park song is “Help Me Remember,” told from the perspective of an Alzheimer's patient who watches as he slowly forgets the face and name of his wife, pleading for help with dagger through the heart lines like “baby I'm scared and I'm not sure who I am.”
12. KC Jones- Queen of the In-Between
Kellie Jones is an acclaimed fiddler on the Louisiana Celtic scene. KC Jones is a rising artist exploring classic country structure, '60s girl groups harmonies, and fuzzed out psychedelic-folk, sometimes in the same song. That Kellie and KC are the same person matters not at all. After all, why do a side project if it's going to sound just like your main one? Here Jones, while getting help from many of her friends in the Celtic community, seems to revel in the freedom offered by the secret identity, an ability to stretch anywhere the song wants with zero expectations. The highlight is the ballad “Bring the House Down,” which gives a different spin on that party exclamation with a woman who hides at home in the dark, bring her house “down” in a psychological sense.
11. Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band- Dance Songs for Hard Times
Boy, did 2021 need Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band. In the midst of depression, economic hardship, illness, death, and general psychological trauma, the trio delivers exactly what the title promises, toe tapping, up-tempo psychobilly anthems about the world's collective malaise. While most wouldn't consider three people to make up a “big damn band” but the size here isn't in numbers but bravado. Despite the always entertaining beat, the Rev isn't afraid to face uncomfortable truths head on. In “Crime to Be Poor”, Peyton preaches in that Webb Wilder-esque stentorian delivery “fish without a license get cuffs on your wrist. Kill the whole river, it's case dismissed. Poor folk go to prison, while rich folks get forgiven.”