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Matt Berninger - Get Sunk
New album: While fans of The National wait for a potential 11th studio album, their singer-songwriter returns with his second solo release, one that captures similar intimacy, melancholy and also expansiveness with songs about uncertainty and anxiety with a certain poignant catharsis
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Shura: I Got Too Sad For My Friends
New album: With her first music since 2019’s acclaimed album forevher, the British singer-songwriter and producer Alexandra Denton returns with a third LP, one that embraces melancholy and addresses the self, capturing six years of uncertainty with a gentle, intelligent perspective, wrapped in refined, matured indie, pop, folk and Americana
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Zoé Basha: Gamble
New album: A sparkling, delightful, charming, polished and witty self-released debut by the Dublin-based French-American singer and guitarist who mixes folk, country, jazz, blues, French chanson and Appalachian with crisply performed covers and originals
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Valerie June: Owls, Omens, and Oracles
New album: Stylish, catchy, charismatic, effervescent, uplifting, retro, Memphis soul, Americana and country by the singer-songwriter from Jackson, Tennessee whose distinctive, bright resonant voice has some echoes of Eartha Kitt and Macy Gray
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Florist: Jellywish
New album: Beautiful, entrancing, wide-eyed, deceptive simplicity pervades this poetic fifth LP by the indie folk New York/ Catskill Mountains quartet fronted by singer-songwriter Emily Sprague, here themed around the natural world’s perceived miracles and mysteries
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The Waterboys: Life, Death And Dennis Hopper
New album: A sprawling, lengthy, pseudo-beatnik rock-country release by the British band fronted by Mike Scott, here celebrating the life of the charismatic, often misunderstand hell-raising Hollywood icon, spanning multiple genres, particularly Americana, with a spread of guests including Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and Fiona Apple
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Hannah Cohen: Earthstar Mountain
New album: A warm, simmering, insightfully beautiful, bittersweet, gently paced, folk-country-pop album by the New Yorker Catskills Mountains-based singer-songwriter, made in collaboration with partner Sam Owens (aka Sam Evian) and including guest appearances from Sufjan Stevens and Clairo
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Jason Isbell: Foxes In The Snow
New album: Following four straight albums with his band the 400 Unit, the Nashville-based Grammy-winning Alabama singer-songwriter’s latest LP is a stripped back, heartfelt, candid, beautiful set of new Americana folk with just him and his 1940 Martin acoustic guitar
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Echolalia
New album: A Nashville ‘supergroup’ in the most free-flowing, relaxed form imaginable, Spencer Cullum, Andrew Combs, Jordan Lehning, Dominic Billett and others combine in a beautiful intertwining of pastoral folk, country, and dream-like, psychedelic Americana
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Melin Melyn: Mill On The Hill
New album: Enormously entertaining, witty, catchy, folk-country-psych-rock by the Cardiff-London band, with clear, upbeat comparisons to Gruff Rhys and Super Furry Animals as well as other original twists in this warm, vintage-feel new release
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Divorce: Drive To Goldenhammer
New album: With a warm, engaging sound, and beautifully crafted, intelligent songs, this excellent debut by the Nottingham indie quartet transcends genres from pop to country, Americana folk to rock with enduring passion and quality
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SASAMI: Blood On The Silver Screen
New album: Following 2022’s excellent alchemic metal and more Squeeze LP, the LA-based classically trained French horn player, singer and composer Sasami Ashworth returns with a cinematic, stylish adventure in well-crafted, mainstream-style pop, aided by producers Jenn Decilveo and Rostam
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Youth Lagoon: Rarely Do I Dream
New album: The idiosyncratic Idaho songwriter and producer Trevor Powers’s latest LP is a vividly cinematic, darkly humorous, dream-like release inspired by a 2023 discovery of VHS home movies documenting his childhood, and lying boxed in the basement of his parents’ house
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Bartees Strange: Horror
New album: A diversely eclectic, genre-hopping, powerfully emotional LP of soul, funk, hip-hop, rock, indie, country, house and pop by the Washington DC-based artist, produced by Jack Antonoff, with songs facing fears as a young young, queer, black person in rural America, and inspired by the likes of Parliament Funkadelic, Fleetwood Mac, Teddy Pendergrass, and Neil Young
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Nadia Reid: Enter Now Brightness
New album: Warm, tender, thoughtfully profound, intelligent, finely crafted indie-folk with Laurel Canyon-era and Americana elements by the now Manchester-based New Zealand singer-songwriter on themes of change, motherhood, home, and heartbreak
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Bonnie "Prince" Billy: The Purple Bird
New album: A mischievously droll, but also tender, gently moving new release by Kentucky’s seasoned singer-songwriter Will Oldham, this time very much in Nashville-flavoured country mode, with numbers about community, relationships and the state of the nation, joined by producer and old friend David “ Ferg” Ferguson
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The second part of our favourite albums of 2024
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 2. Part 1 can be found here. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but please dig into this rich seam of originality and quality, and even suggest more of your own
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Native Harrow: Divided Kind
Album review: Released in September, classy, meticulously crafted, intelligent, warm Americana mix of folk, rock, pop and country by the Philadelphia duo of vocalist Devin Tuel and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms in this sixth LP
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Aisha Badru: The Sun Still Rises
New album: Simple, soothing, gently philosophical but also emotional songs come with the breathy, tender voice of the New York singer-songwriter in this second album of lovely acoustic folk-pop, following 2018’s Pendulum, as well as several EPs
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Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens: American Railroad
New album: The latest in the Nashville singer’s projects with an international collective of musicians interprets traditional creates new folk songs, themed the tough history of the US rail frontier that was mostly built by Irish, African American, Chinese and Japanese immigrants
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