Billy Gibbons and Keith Urban at BMI’s Troubador Awards ceremony on Monday night.
Rising blues star Christone “Kingfish” Ingram digs into his signature Tele as he delivers “Waitin’ for the Bus,” from the 1973 ZZ Top album, Tres Hombres.
The Troubadour Award, which has also been bestowed on John Hiatt, Lucinda Williams, John Prine, and Robert Earl Keen, recognizes songwriters who’ve made a profound impact on the creative community and who are substantially influential. At the private ceremony attended by many notable fellow guitarists, including Steve Cropper, John Oates, and Molly Tuttle, Gibbons was honored by a series of filmed and live testimonials, and, more vividly, by performances with a house band that included Nashville 6-string heroes Tom Bukovac and Guthrie Trapp.
Urban’s nuanced playing on “Rough Boy,” from ZZ Top’s 1986 album Afterburner, was one of the night’s highlights.
Performers included Keith Urban, who delivered a sensitive version of “Rough Boy,” replete with tightly controlled feedback melody lines; rising blues star Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, who tore up “Waitin’ for the Bus” on his signature Fender Tele; Chris Isaak singing “Sharp Dressed Man” while wearing the night’s spangliest Nudie-inspired suit; fellow Troubadour Keen, delivering “La Grange” (with especially ripping turns from Bukovac and Trapp); and Elle King singing “Gimme All Your Lovin’.” In typical Gibbons style, his acceptance speech, which focused on his more than four decades of visiting, playing, and songwriting in Nashville, also included references to gambling debts and sneaking beers while writing a tune for his wife’s teetotaling mother in Music City.
Tuttle and Strings first recorded together on Strings’ 2017 release, Turmoil & Tinfoil.
The pair have a lot in common, and we thought it would be a great idea to put them together to interview one another. “Billy and I, we both grew up playing with our dads,” Tuttle shares at the very beginning of the conversation. Tuttle made her first professional appearance as a recording artist at 13, when she and her father, Jack Tuttle, released The Old Apple Tree. Since her 2019 solo debut, When You’re Ready, Tuttle has evolved through both warm and peppery country tones and her original, adventurous approach to bluegrass, circling back to the genre’s traditional homey twang on Crooked Tree. A new album, City of Gold, is due July 21—and, inspired by her constant touring over the last few years, will offer 13 new tracks that capture the electric energy of the band's live shows.
More recently, Strings felt a sudden sense of urgency to record with his father, Terry Barber, and in November 2022, he put out Me/And/Dad, on which the two play 14 classic bluegrass tunes. As Tuttle comments with fondness below, Strings has a distinctive Doc Watson-esque attack, something that gets flavored by a death metal edge—heard in the every-so-often spectral chord and touch of grimness—thanks to his background in that scene. He recorded his latest single, “California Sober,” with Willie Nelson, and can be heard in duet with Tommy Emmanuel on the Australian guitarist’s new single, “Doc’s Guitar/Black Mountain Rag.”
Dooley's Farm (feat. Billy Strings)
While Strings grew up in Michigan and Tuttle the San Francisco Bay Area, much of their upbringing happened in parallel. Both musicians experienced turning-point moments in their teenage years, where they discovered that not only did their peers accept them for their bluegrass aptitude but celebrated them. For Strings, it happened when he excited his “hipster” friends with a performance of “Black Mountain Rag” at a house party, and for Tuttle, around the time Mumford & Sons was gaining popularity, her classmates discovered her banjo talents—and she became the “banjo girl.”
“Bluegrass is the music that can make me laugh or cry, that I really feel in my soul, and so my electric guitar started collecting dust.”—Billy Strings
Now deep into their discographies, the 30-year-old phenoms took a pause before (and amidst) tour dates to reconnect and discuss the many experiences they’ve shared in modern Americana music. The following conversation offers a view into that world, as well as unique insights into why the two get along so well as both musicians and people.
Molly Tuttle: Billy, you made that awesome new record with your dad. When you were growing up playing music with your dad, did you ever feel like there was a disconnect between the bluegrass side of what you did and other music you played with your peers, or listened to with your peers?
Billy Strings: Yeah, I remember it was probably around the time I was in middle school—I was a skateboarder, and I was playing video games and just hangin’ out with friends. I was getting too cool to be hanging out with my dad’s old friends playing bluegrass. I was like, “Man, I want to play music with people with common interests, not just sitting here talking about Gunsmoke or something.”
But I joined metal bands and got that out of my system, and eventually, I came back around full circle and just had this realization that bluegrass is what I cut my teeth on and what I was spoon-fed as a boy, and it’s really where my heart truly is. Bluegrass is the music that can make me laugh or cry, that I really feel in my soul, and so my electric guitar started collecting dust.
Tuttle: I really resonate with that, because I’ve gone through so many phases of trying to figure out who I am musically, and it took me longer to accept bluegrass as part of who I am. And it really is what makes me, me. But how do I tell my own story through bluegrass? ’Cause there are those two ends of the spectrum. I feel like I’ve gone the other way and been like, “Well, I’m not just a bluegrass musician, I play all this other stuff too.” And then I’ve also felt like, I want to play bluegrass and make it authentic to the genre. It kind of came down to songwriting, to me—like, how do I tell my story through this music and show how it came to be such a big part of my life?
The two bluegrass virtuosos both grew up learning how to play from their fathers, one in California (Tuttle), the other in Michigan (Strings).
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Strings: What are some of your earliest memories of playing with your dad? Do you have any big moments as a child that you were like, “This is what I’m doing—I’m a guitar player”?
Tuttle: I remember as a kid, I played a lot with my dad and we would play around the area where I grew up, in the Bay Area—play different local shows. One big moment for me, when I was like 12 or 13, was getting to go to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco and seeing Earl Scruggs, Hazel Dickens…. Me and my dad somehow finagled backstage passes and got to go to this afterparty, and Hazel was there. It was just so cool. Gillian Welch was there, and Dave Rawlings. He was like, my guitar hero. I remember going into the greenroom to put my stuff down and seeing him just sitting there with a guitar, and that blew my mind. Just seeing people like that up close was like, “Whoa, I could actually do this, and this world feels like where I belong. I could see myself doing this for a long time.” I realized I just wanted to play music as much as possible.
What was the Michigan music scene like for you growing up? Were there festivals or anything that was really important to you?
Strings: Well, I didn’t go to many festivals. At least, when I was young and growing up and first learning how to play, it was more just like me and my dad, my uncle Brad Lasko, and a couple buddies sittin’ around picking by the creek. But all these years later…. I watch other people on stage and I’m like, “How the fuck do they do that? How do they get up there and just play and sing?” I do that too, but I don’t think I do it like other people do. I was at this festival in Texas [South by Southwest], and I was nervous watching other performers! I was nervous for them, like, “Oh my gosh, she’s just up there singing and laying her heart out there! That is terrifying!”
Tuttle: [Laughs.]
Billy Strings' Gear
On String’s latest single, “California Sober,” he plays with the inimitable Willie Nelson.
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Guitars & Banjo
- 2017 Preston Thompson DBA Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought, “Frankenstein”
- 2019 Preston Thompson DBA Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought, “The Bride”
- 1944 Martin D-28
- Rickard Open-Back Banjo
Effects
- Grace Design BiX Preamp
- Strymon Lex Rotary
- Electro-Harmonix Micro Pog
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze
- Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork
- Electro-Harmonix Intelligent Harmony Machine
- MXR Bass Envelope Filter
- Red Panda Raster
- Source Audio C4 Synth
- Source Audio Nemesis Delay
- Source Audio EQ2
- Boss DC-2W Waza Craft Dimension C
- Boss DD-8Boss SY-1
- NativeAudio Pretty Bird Woman
- Chase Bliss Wombtone MKII
- Chase Bliss Mood
- Chase Bliss CXM 1978
- DigiTech Polara
- Peterson StroboStomp HD Pedal Tuner
- Ernie Ball 40th Anniversary Volume Pedal
- Mission Engineering Expression Pedals
Strings & Picks
- D'Addario Medium, XS Coated Phosphor Bronze (.013–.056)
- Blue Chip TP48 Speed Bevel Right Hand
Strings: It’s definitely a weird thing. I still just do not understand how we can get up on stage and do whatever it is that we do.
Tuttle: Do you get any sort of stage fright ever? For me it comes and goes. If you think about it too much.… Sometimes I’m like, what if I don’t remember a single word to any of my songs? [Laughs.]
Strings: I just am always in a state of anxiety because of my career [laughs]. There’s all this pressure. But I’m usually fine once I get out there. It’s leading up to it. Even right now. I’ve been home for two or three weeks, and I’m leaving the day after tomorrow to go back on tour, and I’m scared that I don’t remember how to do it! I don’t know if I remember how to make a set list. I don’t know if I remember if I can still perform a show. But once you get back out there, you just throw yourself into the ring and it’s kind of like them guys that ride them bulls or something. You just kind of strap on, like, “Fuck it, here we go—8 seconds, hold on!”
Tuttle: [Laughs.] I feel like it’s this third thing, like your subconscious takes over and then you remember how to do it. But if you start thinking about it in advance…. We took some time off over the winter break and I had the same feeling, like, “Whoa, how did I do that before?” It really is kind of an extreme thing that we do: traveling all over the place, playing in front of a lot of people.
Strings: But shit, what the hell else are we going to do? Heavy lifting?
PG: Molly, I know Crooked Tree came out about a year ago now. For your earlier recordings, you said that you were trying to experiment musically, whereas this one was more traditional. Is that right?
Tuttle: Yeah, I kind of went back to the bluegrass sound that I grew up with. My first full record, When You’re Ready, I’d just gotten to Nashville. I was writing a bunch of songs where I didn’t know what category they fit into genre-wise. I had so much fun making that record; I really got to experiment with a different style. But then I think something happened in the pandemic lockdown. I got so nostalgic for that music I grew up with, and I missed my family; I missed the community aspect of bluegrass. I love this kind of music; it is folk music, in a way, where it gets passed down from generation to generation. It’s such an organic style of music that brings people together.
So, I started writing bluegrass songs for fun. I was like, “What I feel like I hear bluegrass missing these days, when I turn on the radio, is songs that sound original.” So, I wanted to write songs that could be sung in a bluegrass band, but also told my point-of-view and my story. Once I started, it was hard to stop, and I realized, “I have a full album of songs now, I might as well go into the studio this summer and try to knock out a record.”
Molly Tuttle's Gear
Tuttle has been performing professionally since the age of 13 but didn’t blow her bluegrass cover in school until her later teens.
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Guitars
- Prewar Guitar Company Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought
Effects
- Grace Design FELiX
- Audio Sprockets ToneDexter Acoustic Instrument Preamp
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario Medium Coated Phosphor Bronze
- Dunlop JD Jazztone 207
Strings: And you won a Grammy for it. And I was so happy, because I was just like, she deserves this so much. Obviously, this always gets brought up, but we used to live in the same house—we used to be roommates. And I would always hear Molly practicing and shit, and I’d be like, “Fuck, man, I suck!” [Laughs.]
Tuttle: [Laughs.] I get that feeling when I hear you play, because I feel like we have such different styles. I’m like, “I could never do what Billy is doing.” The way you attack the guitar—I hear Doc Watson, but then there’s also your metal influence as well. I’m just in awe of your playing.
Strings: I’m just fakin’ it. I’m just wingin’ it the whole time, constantly. But are you still usin’ the same pick? Those little black things? What are those?
“Sometimes it may not look like I’m tensing up from someone watching me playing, but inside, I am kind of tense. But I think it is almost meditative, where you have to let go and let yourself play.”—Molly Tuttle
Tuttle: Dunlop Jazztone picks. I feel like I should switch. They’re not fancy picks, and sometimes I’ll try out other picks and people will be like, “That sounds really good.” [Laughs.] I’m just so used to them; I’ve used the same picks since I was 10 years old. They’re pretty heavy picks.
Strings: Well, that’s your sound, where you’re comfortable. I’m finding that that’s what it’s all about, for me anyways, is trying to make it comfortable to play. When I watch other people play, like you, or [Bryan] Sutton, it looks like almost kind of effortless in a way. There’s not all this tension, there’s not veins popping out [laughs]. I’m straining, but some people I see play and there’s just wonderful technique.
Tuttle: I have that too. Sometimes it may not look like I’m tensing up from someone watching me playing, but inside, I am kind of tense. And that’s when I feel like my playing doesn’t come through as well. But I think it is almost meditative, where you have to let go and let yourself play.
When Strings and Tuttle lived together in Nashville, they both felt intimidated when overhearing the other practicing.
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Strings: What kind of strings do you use?
Tuttle: I use D’Addario medium gauge [phosphor bronze]. I use the coated ones because my hands are very acidic.
Strings: Me too! I use the same ones! Shout-out to D’Addario .013–.056 medium gauge phosphor bronze, right? Gotta have that medium gauge, gotta have that coated, ’cause we sweat like crazy. And they don’t break! What guitar are you playing mostly on stage? Which one is the one that’s doin’ it for ya?
Tuttle: Right now, I’m using my Prewar Guitar Company. It’s a Brazilian rosewood D-28 style. I feel like the action and setup stay pretty even on tour, and I love the tone of it. That’s my current fave—what about you?
Strings: Still my [Preston] Thompson that I’ve been using forever. Brazilian, spruce-top dreadnought. I’ve been playing it for several years and that’s the guitar that I play on stage. It’s been through hell. It’s been smashed and it’s been put back together. But it always sounds the best plugged in. I use a K&K pickup and I run it through a [Grace Design BiX]. Also, I have a ’45 Martin that I just put a pickup in. I just wanted to have an old one that I can play on stage. But every time, I go back to Old Faithful. I started calling that guitar “Frankenstein” originally because I put all those different pickups in it, and the switch, and it’s got a microphone installed on the inside that goes to my in-ears. And I had them make me another one just like it, and that’s “The Bride.”
This isn’t guitar nerdy stuff, but I have this song, “Away from the Mire.” I wrote it when I got into a fight with my brother. Then, one night when I was on stage singin’ it, I realized that I wrote that song for myself; I was the one that needed to hear it. Do you have a song like that?
Tuttle: Definitely. I think the first therapeutic song that I remember recording of mine was “Good Enough,” that I recorded on my first ever EP. It’s about accepting yourself. I think I was struggling at the time with anxiety, and just getting started in my career and not knowing where things were going. I was trying to help myself stay in the moment. And I feel like that’s still a theme that I still write about. It means different things to me throughout my life.
“I think our duty is just to bring a little joy to people’s day. And sometimes they can give it back to us by accepting our audible diaries that we pour into our songs.”—Billy Strings
Strings: Well, just keep doing the work, because it’s beautiful stuff and we all need it! I think our duty is just to bring a little joy to people’s day. And sometimes they can give it back to us by accepting our audible diaries that we pour into our songs. We’re lucky to be able to do what we do, and I’m stoked watching you and your band out there kicking ass. It’s just fuckin’ awesome.
Tuttle: Likewise! I just love how you’re bringing this music to the masses, really educating people too about where it came from and your heroes and why it’s so important to you.
Strings: I guess we just gotta keep our sticks on the ice and keep truckin’. ’Cause I think we’re both doing good, and if we just keep our heads down and keep playing guitar, I think we’re going to be alright.YouTube It
It doesn’t take a trained eye to appreciate the wild shredding energy of Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, seen in this live performance of Strings’ “Billy in the Lowground.”
Jason Shadrick — Associate Editor
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
Crooked Tree
It seemed like this year the “young lions” of bluegrass guitar finally broke through. While Billy Strings was on his way to arena-level stardom via the jam band crowd, Molly Tuttle took a less experimental route with a dynamite new album (produced by bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas) and new band. At times her voice echoes Alison Krauss, but her playing is firmly influenced by Tony Rice, Bryan Sutton, and Doc Watson. Songs like “Flatland Girl” and “Over the Line” are bouncing bluegrass jams that move with such a level of relaxed comfort it’s not until Tuttle’s break that you realize she’s straight up shredding. There’s also a fierce and undeniable force in Tuttle’s rhythm playing. At times she can play like a high-speed freight train on cruise control, but she can also dial it back without losing any intensity—just check out her incredible duet with Dan Tyminski on “San Francisco Bay Blues.” It’s easy to see why ripping acoustic guitar is popular again with albums like this.
Must hear tracks: “Flatland Girl,” “Dooley’s Farm,” “Goodbye Girl”
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway - Crooked Tree (Live at the Station Inn)
Madison Cunningham
Revealer
After Madison’s last full-length album, Who Are You Now, I was very intrigued as to how she could put a bigger spotlight on her devastatingly great playing. Thankfully, Revealer has done the job—and then some. Cunningham combines low-tuned oddball guitars with an always-on swirly dual vibrato in the background to amazing effect. It’s a sound in which she not only feels comfortable but thrives in a way few singer/songwriters can. Her riffs and parts are surprising in a way that forces you to listen deeper each time around. The lead single, “Hospital,” has a gritty, nasty tone that is such a welcome juxtaposition against the rather pretty melody that it makes me think of the best of Elliot Smith at times. It’s obvious that her playing style isn’t an accident, but rather a well-focused and deliberate path that will inspire many young songwriters to go beyond simple strumming.
Must hear tracks: “Hospital,” “Life According to Raechel,” “Our Rebellion”
Madison Cunningham - Life According To Raechel (Live At Sonic Ranch Big Blue)
Cardinal Black
January Came Close
About a year ago Chris Buck dropped a video debuting his new band, Cardinal Black. The tune “Tell Me How It Feels” was incredibly crafted and featured Buck’s signature emotive style. Now, a year later, the band’s full-length album is out, and it delivers. The rich tones that Buck coaxes out of his Revstar are rooted in classic rock and blues, but in the context of Cardinal Black they have more textural elements than the typical pentatonic bashing found in so many blues players. “Half Way” sports a massive chorus that brings to mind the best power-pop tunes of the 1970s. You could see this band rocking an old-school blues club and Royal Albert Hall (which they just recently did with Peter Frampton.) Great tunes, great playing, and great tones. What else can you ask for?
Must-hear tracks: “Tell Me How It Feels,” “Half Way,” “Warm Love”
Cardinal Black - Ain't My Time (Abbey Road Live Session)
Most-anticipated 2023 releases: Metallica’s (probable) return to old-school thrash, Nickel Creek, a live Julian Lage album, and at least 12 Cory Wong albums.
Tessa Jeffers — Managing Editor
Wu-Lu
LOGGERHEAD
In the middle of his song “South,” Miles Romans-Hopcraft, aka Wu-Lu, lets out a scream so guttural and jarring, you might wonder if he’s okay. But it’s so deliciously cathartic to the core that I understand why primal scream therapy is trending in this year of our lord 2022-almost-2023. Wu-Lu’s shrieky bellow will get your attention but stick around for his mad-scientist kitchen of sounds. This debut album is an arresting amalgamation of truly original inception. He filets disparate instrumentation and influences into modern hip-hop infused songs wrapped in an entrée of punk. The best part is, he’s sampling himself. After recording late-night, guitar-improv jams, Wu-Lu dissects and distills them into usable musical spices to sprinkle into his songs. I’m amused, entertained, made happy by artists who construct in a way I’ve not quite experienced before, and Romans-Hopcraft’s process floors me. Guess what else? Wu-Lu is even better live, in the flesh, 3D, outside the Matrix. Watch the performance video below while I go scream primally into a pillow as an ode to Wu-Lu for the drum-n-bass wonder he’s done.
Must-hear tracks: “South,” “Blame”
Wu-Lu - Echoes with Jehnny Beth - @ARTE Concert
Angel Olsen
Big Time
I recently read a book about poets who lived during the first half of the 20th century. It explored how word troubadours were the first rock stars, the champions of counterculture and leaders in expression arts before rock music gave way to a new generation of minstrel messengers. Angel Olsen writes songs how poets be poet’ing. It’s all storytelling, but magic comes in making choices of movement, placement, adding, taking away, and, oh, the vulnerability. Making a twangy “Nashville Sound” heartbreak album suits Olsen’s truth-tellin’ ways. A few months ago, I attended a solo acoustic performance by Olsen, where she plucked out each emotion dynamically on her strings, light touch, and with tortured spacing, hard land. She bared some soul, made it accessible, and by doing so, commanded all attention in the room, stared down hard moments, made jokes in between, and shared personal vignettes of painful and beautiful shuffling around this orb of topsoil, water, wind, and fire. This is her take on a country-fied album, but Angel is a rock star.
Must-hear tracks: “All the Good Times,” “Ghost On”
Angel Olsen - All The Good Times (Official Video)
Nick Millevoi — Associate Editor
Bill Orcutt
Music for Four Guitars
The coolest, most intriguing album of guitar music I’ve heard this year is, without a doubt, Bill Orcutt’s quartet for overdubbed 4-string electric guitars. Over the course of 14 tracks—each of which comes in around a short-and-sweet two minutes—Orcutt writes in the familiar vocab of his improvised work. But here, his riffage is focused into contrapuntal cellular structures that evoke minimalism by way of composers Glenn Branca (in the overtone puree of “Or from behind”) and Louis Andriessen (in the angular dissonance of “Only at dusk”). There’s also major-key melodic eloquence (on “At a distance”) that borders on Reichian, but with a raw-er, more treble-soaked tone than anyone who’s tackled the composer’s “Electric Counterpoint” has dared to attempt (to my knowledge, at least). Throughout the album, repeated listening reveals new shapes and structures, and I keep coming back, ready to discover more. Bonus: The digital release comes with an 84-page PDF score, hand-tabbed by forward-thinking guitar adventurer Shane Parish, so anyone can play along once they cut a couple strings off their guitar and detune.
Must-hear tracks: “Or from behind,” “Only at dusk,” “At a distance”
Hermanos Gutiérrez
El Bueno Y El Malo
I knew I’d love this album as soon as I saw the video for the first single, “El Bueno Y El Malo.” I was right, and I’ve since become a huge fan of all the Hermanos’ records. These guys just have their aesthetic completely dialed in, and their songs draw from classic sources like Santo & Johnny, Neil Young, and Ennio Morricone. It helps that they recorded this one at Easy Eye Sound, but the Gutiérrez brothers would sound good if they recorded on an iPhone. When I saw them live this fall in Philadelphia, I was truly blown away by the nuances in each brother’s playing, but even more by the focused energy they conjure with their playing. This is serious vibe music, fit to accompany a modern Western or a long drive on an open road.
Must-hear tracks: “El Bueno Y El Malo,” “Thunderbird,” “Tres Hermanos (feat. Dan Auerbach)”
Hermanos Gutiérrez - "El Bueno Y El Malo" [Official Music Video]
Various Artists
Imaginational Anthem vol. XI: Chrome Universal - A Survey of Modern Pedal Steel
The latest in an ongoing series of well-curated comps from Tompkins Square, this one has easily become my favorite. Compiled by Nashville’s Luke Schneider, volume XI focuses on the wide world of contemporary pedal-steel players. Each of the nine featured artists reach beyond the stratosphere to create mostly ambient explorations that challenge the common notions of what their instrument is capable of. I was drawn to this set because it includes three players whose work I greatly admire: Susan Alcorn, Rocco DeLuca, and BJ Cole. I’ve since spent time deep diving through the works of every player on the album, getting to know and love each of their distinct voices. Much more than a great playlist that serves as a strong introduction to each steeler (which, of course, it is), I keep thinking of this record as a single work, which is probably as big an endorsement of Schneider’s curation as I can imagine.
Must-hear tracks: “An Ode to Dungeness” by Spencer Cullum, “Lysglimt” by Maggie Bjorklund, “Gilmor Blue” by Susan Alcorn
Lysglimt - Maggie Bjorklund
Charles Saufley — Gear Editor
Necronomicon
Tips zum Selbstmord
I burn out on guitar rock pretty easily these days. That doesn’t, however, mean I need the adrenaline rush it provides any less. In these moments, I tend to look to primal sources. Thankfully, my buddy Ben tipped me to this 50th anniversary reissue of the stupidly rare Tips zum Selbstmord, a lost masterwork of brilliant-to-demented German prog/psych-punk hybridization. Tips… is pretty intense at times. Well, most of the time. There are traces of Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Iron Butterfly, maybe even some Stooges and fellow heavy Krautrock freak vanguards like Guru Guru and Amon Duul II. (Necronomicon also share AD II’s affinity for unexpected, inexplicable bursts of distinctly untrained, quasi-operatic vocals.) But while Necronomicon clearly worked hard in the practice room, and gave these sprawling arrangements much thought, there is an atavistic edge and immediacy here that suggests a band creeping forth from primordial muck. Best of all, it feels utterly, amazingly lacking in self-awareness—a thrilling thing to hear in an era of relentless, calculated self-presentation.
Necronomicon = Tips Zum Selbstmord - 1972 - (Full Album)
Misha Panfilov
The Sea Will Outlive Us All
The cover of The Sea Will Outlive Us All, pays homage to private press LPs of the late ’60s and early ’70s. In some ways, Estonian multi-instrumentalist Misha Panfilov wears musical influences from that period on his sleeve too. But while it’s easy to hear trace elements of Franco/Italian soundtrack gems and circa-’69 Pink Floyd, these instrumental meditations exist quite outside of time. And like a lot of music I cherish, they suggest utopian possibilities, future/past fusions uncolored by cynicism, and endlessly unfolding days when summer looms ever closer.
Misha Panfilov - The Sea Will Outlive Us All (Full Album 2022)
Ted Drozdowski — Editorial Director
The Linda Lindas
Growing Up
Even I’m shocked that my favorite album of the year is by four teenaged girls from Los Angeles. But I love this record! Bela Salazar and Lucia de la Garza slam down a wall of guitars that resonates between the Ramones and epic ’90s alt-rock. All four Lindas sing killer harmony, and they’ve got great hooks and melodies in their pockets. And listening to their lyrics about the trials and trips of young life makes me wish I was as smart and self-aware as they are when I was their age. Oh, and they’re tough onstage, too. Check out the performance video of their song “Racist, Sexist Boy” … at the L.A. Public Library, of all places. The icing for me was interviewing Salazar and de la Garza for our “10 Young Guitar Players to Watch” feature in the November PG. They were funny, poised, and candid about just how much they didn’t know about playing guitar—and that takes way more confidence than I had as a teenager. In today’s music, the Linda Lindas are the cool kids.
Must hear tracks: “Growing Up,” “Talking to Myself,” Racist, Sexist Boy,” and “Nino.”
The Linda Lindas - "Growing Up"
Valerie June
Under Cover
Sure, it’s a covers album, but I could listen to Valerie June sing a menu and be entirely satisfied—especially if she was able to layer her vocals and use reverb the way she does here as co-producer with Jack Splash, whose own credits run deep in the contemporary R&B world. The spare-to-perfection instrumentation adds the right emotional underpinning, too. She turns great songs by Nick Drake (“Pink Moon”), Nick Cave (“Into My Arms”), John Lennon (“Imagine”), Mazzy Star (“Fade Into You”), Joe South (“Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home”), and others into magic carpet rides. I find that irresistible.
Must-hear tracks: “Fade Into You,” “Pink Moon,” “Imagine”
Valerie June - Fade Into You
Charlie Musselwhite
Mississippi Son
When I profiled this old lion of the blues in PG over the summer, in a piece titled “Charlie Musselwhite Goes Back to the Delta,” I described this album as “beautiful as a fresh magnolia blossom with hints of dust on its petals.” But it also contains the mysticism of the greatest of Mississippi’s traditional music—partly gothic, reflective of the history and the soil it took place upon, echoing with the voices of the past that still resonate—particularly in Musselwhite’s head and heart—like Big Joe Williams and John Lee Hooker. Fans of the harmonica virtuoso have known of his estimable skill at Delta-style country blues guitar for ages, but in more than a half-century of recording he’s not revealed it until this album. Ricocheting between original songs and durable classics, Musselwhite sounds like an oracle—especially on the talking blues “The Dark,” a Guy Clark number. His message—to paraphrase Sam Phillips: This is music that comes from a place where the soul of a man or woman never dies.
Must-hear tracks: “The Dark,” “Pea Vine Blues,” “Crawling Kingsnake”
The Dark
Most-anticipated 2023 releases: Hummmm, maybe that Sonny Sharrock tribute album Carlos Santana has been putting together? And the new Messthetics project, plus more work by Mike Baggetta, Bill Frisell, and PJ Harvey. And—I know, I ask every year—new music by Tom Waits? More gems from Dan Auerbach’s trove of unreleased historic live blues recordings would also be welcome. And Dan, isn’t it time to produce an album for Kenny Brown? And finally, that new Metallica album is on the way! Thank you, Santa.