Our 10 Favorite Americana Albums of 2022 So Far

While 2022 hasn't been the bounty year for Americana releases that 2021 was, with artists flooding the market with albums recorded during their pandemic touring pause, that has in some ways been a blessing. Without giants like Rhiannon Giddens or Yola some artists who might not have been featured but whose albums deserve a bigger spotlight might have been missed. So if my list of favorite Americana albums from the first half of 2022 contains a larger than usual number of artists who you don't recognize, I hope you'll consider it a blessing. The only reason for these kinds of things to exist (aside from padding the page views of websites) is to discover great albums you might otherwise have not known. As is always the case with my lists, these are favorites, not bests. As a one-man Americana review section, there is no possible way for me to hear everything, so I welcome suggestions for material in the comments. Where I reviewed the album, I have linked it. Where not, I have included a YouTube video of one of the album's best songs.

10. Leyla McCalla- Breaking the Thermometer
Leyla McCalla, best known for being a member of Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters, makes her case as a serious solo artist with Breaking the Thermometer. It's a loose concept album exploring her Haitian roots. McCalla intersperses clips from Radio Haiti, one of the only consistent voices of freedom in what has often been an oppressive government, in her songs. Sung in a mix of Creole and English, McCalla's brings personal perspective to the stories of a country often caught in the middle of a game of political football.

9. Erin Rae- Lighten Up
Erin Rae has spent a lot of her career on weighty topics like lack of acceptance of her sexuality or the disregard for women in music and the workplace in general. On Lighten Up she turns her attention inward, using the forced isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic to find her balance, often in the music that inspired her. There are flashes of British folk artists like Fairport Convention, Laurel Canyon's folk rock, and '70s lite rock (in places Rae's voice sounds enough like Karen Carpenter to be eerie). It's an album that should further what was already a rocketing career to the next level.

8. River Whyless- Monoflora
River Whyless went in a different direction with Monoflora. In 2019 they sequestered in drummer Alex McWalter's cabin with no prepared songs and a home studio. The result of the paring down was a return to the more rustic and rootsy sound of their early records rather than the more electric and synth forward songs from their most recent offerings. Vocally, everything there is to love about River Whyless remains, with the band's three vocalists passing lead and harmony vocals back and forth seamlessly and selflessly.

7. Nicki Bluhm- Avondale Drive
The post-Gramblers Nicki Bluhm casts a wide influence net on Avondale Drive, from blue-eyed soul to classic country to '60s girl groups. With hooks like “you're already gone... so go” in “Leaving Me (Is the Loving Thing to Do” to “it's easy being angry, but harder being sad” in the dating scene send-up “Friends (How to Do It).” Featuring co-writes from AJ Croce, Oliver Wood (Wood Brothers), Bluhm has released the best album of her career.

6. Secret Emchy Society- Gold Country/Country Gold
If this list were based purely on the most fun record of the first half of 2022, this would be a runaway #1. Though a band at the vanguard of the modern queer country scene, the band is never heavy-handed or preachy with their message. Instead, they stake their claim to belong in a genre that is increasingly not receptive to anything outside their very narrow lines by being more outlaw than the outlaws. As with their previous album, Gold Country/Country Gold is harder drinking, harder driving, harder living, and harder rocking than any of the autotuned country-pop abominations emanating from Nashville's Lower Broad. The highlight is the radio kryptonite “Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other”, which is just as subversive as it was when Willie Nelson released it in 2006.

5. Aoife O'Donovan- Age of Apathy
There aren't many artists in the Americana realm as consistent as Aoife O'Donovan. While the lyrical themes of her songs may change with the times, the gently rolling finger-picked acoustic guitars and voice that never wavers despite always seeming to be on the edge of fragile remain. They're the things that made her so popular as a frequent guest on NPR's now sadly defunct Live From Here and its predecessor A Prairie Home Companion. For this album, the songs live up to the title, looking back at the days before mobile devices ensured we remained plugged in at all times, reflecting on the loneliness but also the simplicity of the road for a traveling musician, and a tentative hope for the future. Featuring vocal assists from Allison Russell and Madison Cunningham, O'Donovan keeps doing what she does best.

4. Colin Hay- The Now and the Evermore
When the always optimistic and frequently funny Colin Hay says he's releasing an album that focuses on themes of mortality, it could be cause for worry. Unless you've been listening to Hay since his days in Men at Work, with its broken cars and strongmen bearing yeast extracts. Then you know he'll find a way to inject a ray of light, and possibly even a laugh or two, into a topic made even more serious by a COVID-19 pandemic that crossed 6 million dead when the album was released (Source: CDC). He's frank in his assessments (“nobody gets a sequel. Everyone gets shown the door”) but also curious about the mysteries of what lies beyond, as well as determined to make the most of the loved ones who still remain.

3. Regina Spektor- Home, Before and After
Home, Before and After was released just days before my June 30 cutoff for releases and for most albums, it likely still wouldn't have made it onto the list on the simple lack of time to spend with it. So the fact that it's not only included, but at #3 is indicative of just how much the album hit me in my sweet spot. No one does wistful and playful at the same time as well as Spektor and album cuts like “Loveology” and “Spacetime Fairytale” show it's still her strength. I may have only gotten six days with the album before the end of June, it's already one of my most played albums of 2022, in near constant rotation anytime I'm not listening to something for review.

2. Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway- Crooked Tree
Molly Tuttle always looks and sounds like she's having more fun than is likely legal anytime she's holding a guitar and her latest album with her band Golden Highway is no different. More bluegrass oriented than her recent releases, there are still some toe tapping folk tunes like album highlight “Side Saddle”, which features an unlikely vocal assist from Gillian Welch, the master of the mournful tone. In addition to Welch, Tuttle gets vocal and instrumental help from the likes of Margo Price, Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Billy Strings, and Old Crow Medicine Show, whose leader Ketch Secor co-wrote several of the songs. If your mental picture of bluegrass is songs about murdered lovers, scorned women, and plenty of depression-drowning alcohol, do yourself the favor of giving Crooked Tree a spin. You won't be sorry.

1. Government Cheese- Love
Is Government Cheese “Americana?” I don't know. I stopped trying to put a neat definition on that genre years ago and just went with Brandi Carlile's definition of “the home where the weirdos are welcome.” By that definition, Government Cheese is absolutely Americana. One of the '80s rock bands in the Nashville scene that in some ways laid the groundwork for what would become Americana, it was so nice to see the band not only reform for a few shows (which lasted over 2.5 hours of fast rocking fury. They may not be young anymore but their cardio regimen is strong) but for an album that leans heavily into the garage rock sound and sense of humor that made songs like “Camping on Acid”, “My Old Kentucky Home” and “For the Battered” fan favorites. Album highlights include “Rock and Roll Retirement Home” and “Left for the Sky.”