Colin’s Pick of The Latest Country and Americana Releases Part Two

7 February 2025 165 54 5

MASSY FERGUSON: You Can’t Tell Me I’m Not What I Used To Be

Massy Ferguson have been together for twenty years and this is their seventh album, with a back catalogue that takes in everything from psychedelia to lo-fi recordings this latest offering is something of a departure. It’s still American heartland guitar driven rock n roll but their sound has evolved, and at times mellowed throughout the eleven songs offered here.

Recorded at Soundview Analog Recorders in Everett, Washington on vintage sixty year old studio equipment the sound reproduction is organic and atmospheric letting the lush instrumentation that includes Farfisa organ, harpsichord and upright piano shine through.

Massy Ferguson have moved through varied musical territories as a way of conveying emotion through realization, texture, and nuance, the place where the mood meets the heart meets the mind. This new release is both a radical departure from the band’s previous method of recording, and contextually reinforces what sets them apart from virtually every other band on the rock scene: their commitment to song-writing as craft. The stand-out track ‘So Long, Carry On’ featuring the understated yet hauntingly beautiful voice of Zan Fiskum is worth the price of admission alone.

(NORTH & LEFT RECORDS)

www.massyfergusonband.com

DAN RAZA Wayfarer

Two good breaks propelled Dan Raza forward – being picked while still a student to tour with Joan Armatrading, and being championed by Neil Young on his ‘Living With War‘ website. He’s already released two acclaimed Americana albums and has a third album ‘Wayfarer‘ due February 2025.

It’s been a while between albums as Dan explains: “After my last album, ‘Two’, came out (in 2017), I found myself feeling burnt-out and in need of a change of environment. I’d just come out of a long-term relationship, Brexit had just happened, and things were starting to feel quite claustrophobic for me in the UK. I just had a realisation that life is short and I’d spent the best part of a decade-and-a-half doing the same things and had become a bit jaded; I wanted to go new places, meet new people, and spend some time reflecting on where I was at the time and where I wanted to go next.” The solution was book a flight to Tennessee, and begin a long period of touring around the US, Mexico and mainland Europe.

KRIS DELMHORST Ghosts in The Garden

Scheduled for release on March 7 2025 Ghosts in the Garden is the gorgeous and searching new album from Kris Delmhorst. It’s a layered, kaleidoscopic meditation on grief, loss, and fate.

Kris Delmhorst is an American songwriter, singer, instrumentalist, and producer. Over more than 25 years as an independent artist, she has built a body of work characterized by a wide-ranging, genre-agnostic curiosity and constant collaboration. In addition to nine critically acclaimed studio albums, she’s written music for films and TV, produced albums for Session Americana and Jeremy Moses Curtis, contributed instrumentation and vocals to scores of other artists’ work, and performed thousands of shows across the US and Europe. Kris Delmhorst lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, the songwriter Jeffrey Foucault, and their daughter.

Inhabiting the songs are a host of vivid spirits made tangible: the departed and the disappeared, sins and their consequences; lost loves, missed chances, and the invisible sorrows that accompany us all. With richly observed details and finely calibrated emotional range. Delmhorst finds the wavelength that illuminates these multitudes. Having summoned them, she doesn’t avert her eyes from her ghosts – or ours – but invites them into an expansive conversation about the ways we’re shaped by loss, and woven together by unseen threads of love.

The stories on this record unfold from the inside out like fables, sketching archetypical characters – a fisherman recalling details of a life tethered to the margins, a soldier remembering the universe of a single day and night of love – and transforming them into proxies for our own hauntings. The darkly hypnotic ‘Wolves’ reckons with the mortality of parents, the ordinary and inevitable orphaning that we all face. “I see wolves / circling the fire / circling the fire with their yellow eyes”, Delmhorst sings, steadying and challenging us to meet death’s gaze with respect, before posing the album’s central question: “Do you really love the story if you don’t love the end?”

SYLVIE LEWIS Lives Wisely

Sylvie Lewis’ first album release since 2015, Lives Wisely is a collection of songs written in an arc spanning pre-motherhood in Italy and ending in post-pandemic Britain and is set for release March 7th 2025.

During that time Sylvie lost dear friend and long-time producer Richard Swift and was unsure where to turn to make this record. Fortunately she’d met Jonah Tolchin in Brighton while he was on tour with mutual friend Dawn Landes. While noticing he was giving guitar lessons during the pandemic, they were a non-possibility for Sylvie at the time as she was home alone with her 3-year-old son. However, when the pandemic began to blow over and some old routines resumed, she reached out to Jonah to get lessons and the pair quickly decided to work together.

Jonah then pulled Joe Harvey-Whyte on board as co-producer who would be present in Karma Studios in London, while Jonah maintained a virtual presence from his New Jersey base during the sessions.

Sylvie has been writing songs for a long time, to learn and improve, both at the craft of writing and at living. She has also co-written extensively, a habit she began back in Nashville. Highlights include:

‘Call Me When it Rains (Mike’s Song)’ is about her dear friend Mike who she always called when the thunder rolled in. Upon hearing the song he cheekily asked if she would put “Mike’s song” in brackets after the title.

‘Famous to Me’ is a title Sylvie held in her head for years and when she couldn’t get started, Jude Johnstone was the only co-writer she wanted to work with to sort it out. Jude was having some writer’s block issues and this song pulled her out of them! It celebrates the unsung heroes that shine bright in each of our lives

Stories I Only Tell My Friends

Chicago-based R&B/Americana singer/songwriter guitarist Nikki O’Neill has a new album scheduled for release March 14th 2025. Featuring eleven songs written by O’Neill, the album is co-produced by her and Rich Lackowski, and it was recorded mostly live with her 5-piece band by John Abbey at Kingsize Sound Labs in Chicago. The album’s making was largely supported by the Illinois Arts Council, who chose O’Neill as one of their Creative Catalyst Grant recipients for 2025.

The soul-inspired Americana sound that permeates Stories I Only Tell My Friends is very much a joint creation between Nikki and her band: Rich Lackowski (drums, percussion, harmony vocals), Chris Corsale (most lead guitars, harmony vocals) and Teddy Myers (organ, piano, Wurlitzer and Rhodes), along with John Abbey and Chris Stanford on bass. Nikki played rhythm guitar, all acoustic guitars, the solos on ‘Square One’ and ‘I Wish the Sun Could Shine on Me’, plus the twin guitar solo on ‘I Just Knew’ (together with Corsale)

THE DOOHICKEYS All Hat No Cattle

Although they have country roots, the duo met at USC (FIGHT ON!) while working on the college TV station’s satirical news show. On one fateful evening, Jack was hosting a legendary Halloween party when Haley heard the sounds of Kenny Chesney echoing through the spookily decorated halls. Right then, they discovered their mutual love of country music. The next day, they wrote the song I Wish My Truck Was Bigger.

The band has performed at notable venues such as the famous Bluebird Cafe, Desert 5 Spot, The Hotel Cafe, and even the prestigious Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN (supporting comedian Jim Jefferies). You can usually find them prowling around the LA music scene, delivering their unique spin on country music to anyone looking for a fun time.