Browsing Tag

COUNTRY-FOLK

Doomscroll Rodeo: Sam Carlson’s On My Phone (and I Missed It) Is Honkytonk Americana for the App-Trapped Age

Posted on 10 July 2026

Honkytonk breached the 21st century through Sam Carlson’s tragically relatable latest single, On My Phone (and I Missed It). If the twangy Americana earworm didn’t carry its cheeky quintessential charm, it would probably send everyone who hears it into an existential spiral once they realise how much of life has slipped by as they were staring into the architecture of time-stealing apps.

Somewhere between satirical, observational and confessional lyricality, On My Phone (and I Missed It) resounds as the ultimate sign of our mind-frayed times, as Carlson squares up to his digital addiction with enough jovial barroom levity to keep the sermon from becoming sanctimonious. The track has that rare old-country knack of making a joke land first, then letting the punchline brew into uncomfortably potent truth.

Written in Key West with local poet laureate Tortuga Jack Hackett, an 80-year-old kayak guide with ties to Shel Silverstein, the single carries the spirit of folk humour passed through a modern malaise. Updating the premise of Silverstein’s I Was Stoned and I Missed It for the age of phones gives Carlson a perfect vehicle for his plainspoken wit.

With a ten-track album, Any Minute Now, planned for vinyl later this year, and 500 vinyl copies already sold of 2024’s The Second Hand without online promotion, Carlson clearly knows how to reach listeners beyond the algorithm.

On My Phone (and I Missed It) is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Early in the Morning by Soul Zimon & His Kozmic Combinations Glows with Sleepy Languid Beauty

Posted on 14 April 2026

Soul Zimon & His Kozmic Combinations swept a masterstroke of folk across the airwaves with the release of Early in the Morning. Melodically, it is intimate enough to feel like the gently plucked guitar strings were specifically cut as the key to your own soul, as you feel the resonance of the release pouring in.

Zimon captures the sleepy, languid beauty of daybreak, the weariness of pulling yourself into consciousness and the tendency to start seeking, to start reaching. If we’re lucky, it’s on the next pillow, but for many, the reaching renders nothingness into fruition, and that absence is hauntingly echoed through this warm yet wistful stunner of a release. There’s nothing overworked here, just honest phrasing, deft melodic restraint and a feel for emotional detail that lands right in the chest. It’s a lovely, low-burning reminder that folk still has the power to say the most with the least.

Rooted in a Swedish take on countryfolk-blues and drawing from the golden age of folk, Americana and country music, Soul Zimon carries the kind of stripped-back sincerity that calls to mind the inward pull of Townes Van Zandt, the earth-worn tenderness of early Neil Young and the plainspoken ache of John Prine. That lineage sits naturally in the song without ever turning it into pastiche.

Early in the Morning is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Iyla Elise – Ain’t Linear: an Americana folk pop philosophy steeped in realism and whiskey-soaked honesty

Posted on 20 January 2026

Iyla Elise created a new Americana folk pop philosophy with Ain’t Linear, a meditation on how, day by day, your mind, body and soul can sway one way. The roots-deep release feels like the ultimate permission slip to live in the present, and to accept whatever emotions and transgressions the present brings with it. Built on honesty rather than gloss, Ain’t Linear unfolds as an earworm you can mine endless self-consolation from, guided by a trailblazing independent singer-songwriter whose voice would feel equally at home in a dusky dive bar and on the biggest stages.

There’s a quiet power in the way Ain’t Linear holds space for contradiction. Anyone chasing endless happiness will recognise the deeper truth running through the song; realism often brings far more peace than forced optimism. Sugarcoating nothing while never leaning into self-pity, the organically timbred arrangement lets every whiskey-soaked note breathe. Each vocal swell steals the oxygen from your lungs in the most grounding way possible, anchoring you firmly in the now. It’s a track that understands fluctuation as part of being human, and that understanding radiates from every corner of the production.

Hailing from a small town on the east coast of Virginia, Iyla Elise draws from Americana, country and blues traditions, threading relatable lyricism with melodies that land straight in the chest. Her storytelling carries the weight of lived experience, shaped by years of songwriting recognition and steady releases that have built genuine momentum. With Ain’t Linear, Iyla Elise has already delivered one of the most grounding releases of the year, setting the bar transcendently high through an affectingly authentic approach to song crafting.

Ain’t Linear is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Back to the Farm carried Michael B Tipton’s consoling cadence back to his roots-deep origin

Posted on 15 November 2025

Michael B Tipton brought a velvety gruff timbre powerful enough to make Americana transcendent in Back to the Farm, where his voice frictionlessly pulls across lap steel strings and organ keys. You’ll only find his league in the pantheon of country singer-songwriters, and he kept to that evocatively arcane path with this release. The return to his roots runs deeper than lyrical nods. The true blue troubadour kept his rhythmic strides as humbly intimate as they were when he first picked up his guitar and started to embark on his solo path, intent on sharing an effortlessly consoling presence with anyone stretched too thin, anyone in need of catharsis through contemporary accordance.

Across the track, Tipton channels a tenderness sharpened by experience. The emotional weight in the songwriting settles into the instrumentation rather than resting on top of it, letting the lap steel glide like a memory half reclaimed. If you could imagine a synthesis of Chris Isaak, Richard Hawley, and Nick Drake rolled into one score of pantheon-worthy roots music perfection, you’ll get the closest approximation of what Tipton rendered in this love song to end all love songs. Back to the Farm feels like a slow exhale after a long season, a moment that warms the edges of whatever the world has weathered into you.

Based in Kansas City, the neo-traditional artist has shaped a reputation built on heartfelt storytelling and clever lyricism. His debut album, Out of the Woods, drew critical recognition, and his songwriting reached wider audiences through placements on major television networks. Alongside his seasoned band The Scoundrels, and with stage time shared with Bronwyn Keith Hynes and Jason Isbell, Tipton continues to grow while keeping sincerity at the forefront. Back to the Farm strengthens that legacy with unforced conviction.

Back to the Farm is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

– Review by Amelia Vandergast

Westminster Park wrapped romanticism in sonorous retro cinema with their country folk serenade, A Pair on a Pier

Posted on 19 September 2025
Westminster Park

Westminster Park unravelled the ache and splendour of enduring love with their country folk serenade, A Pair on a Pier. Recorded in their home studio and brushed with the warm gloss of Brandon General and Ben Srokosz’s mastering, the waltz drifts in like a slow tide, heavy with sentiment and light on pretension. It is retro arthouse cinema in sound, a sonic photograph of a week in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where nothing existed but the salt air and the slow burn of reignited affection.

With a Parisian sense of timeless style sewn into the sepia-tinted sonics, A Pair on a Pier becomes the aural epitome of romanticism; tender in all the right places, scintillatingly sonorous in all the rest. The harmonies hum with the kind of synergy that sidesteps cliché. They don’t rely on overplayed tropes or declarations; they breathe. They murmur truth and tangle around the lyrics like the arms of someone you never want to let go of again.

If you’ve never been to Montmartre, hand in hand with the one who became more your world than the earth beneath your feet, this track will take you there, while letting you inhale the Nova Scotian breeze and stripping away years of distraction. This is for everyone who still believes love’s eulogy hasn’t been written yet.

A Pair on a Pier is now available on all major streaming platforms. Support the artist by purchasing their music on Bandcamp. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Randy C Moore walks the dusty Americana roads in his country-folk revival of ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’

Posted on 19 August 2025

While Ugly Kid Joe left one of the most recognised modern marks on the timeless Cat’s in the Cradle, Randy C Moore has taken the single right back to its roots. Stripped of gloss and given the rich grain of twangy Americana folk guitar and banjo strings, his cover lets the country cadence carry the story home. His voice, with the same affecting poignancy as Cash at his most reflective, feels like the harmonic equivalent of twisting your moustache while letting a knowing smile break through an air of melancholy.

Moore doesn’t need to hunt for reinvention, his charm lies in travelling the same old dusty Americana roads while somehow showing you new sonic sights. There’s a meditative quality to his rendition; the kind of stillness that pulls the listener into the weight of the words. His vocal range doesn’t just carry the melody; it illustrates the personal resonance the song holds for him. By the time the outro rolls in, the thematic core of the track feels reframed, sharpened by his nuanced and mournful delivery.

Co-produced with Barry Sanders and Rick Korn, Moore’s version also features in the forthcoming 50th Anniversary Harry and Sandy Chapin Cat’s in the Cradle film, set for release on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. With decades of history in the Texas country scene, Moore proves here that reverence and individuality can sit in perfect harmony.

Cat’s in the Cradle is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.


Review by Amelia Vandergast

Alex Johnston Let the Sepia-Toned Twang of Country Folk Tell the Truth on Sitting Alone

Posted on 11 August 2025

There’s been a lot said about the creeping endemic of isolation, but Alex Johnston frames it with a tender frankness in Sitting Alone, the title track from his sophomore country folk LP. Through a lens tinged with sepia, the song carries the dusty warmth of the 60s and 70s, drawing from the twang of Americana and the understated melancholy that would resonate with admirers of Nick Drake, The Zombies, and Neil Young.

The arrangement is stripped of excess yet rich in texture, letting the guitar’s gentle cadence and Johnston’s easy, un-postured delivery breathe. It’s a bittersweet portrait, neither wallowing in solitude nor sugar-coating it, instead allowing moments of light to seep in through the melancholy. There’s a playfully free quality to the phrasing that makes the track feel like a quiet conversation with someone who understands, even if they can’t solve the problem at hand.

While Johnston might downplay the ripple his sound has made, there’s an undeniable charm in the unvarnished nature of his songwriting. He’s not here to put on airs, only to create an honest connection, and in Sitting Alone, that connection is both unassuming and profound.

Sitting Alone is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Jeff Batson served Americana sunny side up in ‘Somebody’s Somebody’

Posted on 2 August 2025

There’s a particular golden hour glow that you only get from the true artists of Americana, and you’ll find it blazing through the newest single from Jeff Batson, Somebody’s Somebody. If you want to know what it sounds like when country-folk is served sunny side up, dig into this release, which delivers all the twang of homegrown Americana with the echo of R.E.M. on a high serotonin day.

Even though Somebody’s Somebody is a feel-good track at its core, there’s no saccharine desperation to elevate or exhilarate; the fuzzy euphoria that spills and resonates is just a natural propensity of Batson’s infectious sonic signature that has scribed its way through the decades, getting sharper, warmer and more affecting with each passing year.

Batson’s career roots reach deep, stretching from the clubs of St. Louis to the heart of Nashville, where his pen has crafted hits for the likes of Tracy Lawrence, Jamie Richards, and Laura Bryna, with chart-toppers and heartfelt tributes that prove his gift for songwriting is anything but ordinary.

In this single, if you’re still waiting to be called Somebody’s Somebody, the anthem won’t rub salt in the wound; it gives you a light at the end of the tunnel, teasing the sweet resolve of irreplaceability in a world full of possibility where everything feels disposable and many things feel thankless.

As the single progresses, you’re taken on a full emotional arc as the Americana twang becomes more pronounced until Batson riffs a curveball with the guitar solo, where true blue and roots-deep rock n roll comes alive. Hollywood might drop the ball with every new love story, but in his safe, deft hands, affectionate narratives still shine with Jeff Batson’s discography.

Somebody’s Somebody is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 
Review by Amelia Vandergast

Whiskey Hill Poured Americana Folk Vindication Through Panoramic Melancholy in ‘Cut You Down’

Posted on 2 June 2025

If there are eyes that glisten as though they’ve lived a thousand years, Patricia Murphy’s voice is the sonic equivalent. In Cut You Down, the standout single from Whiskey Hill’s debut LP Paloma, her vocal presence embodies the weight of experience. Alongside guitarist and backing vocalist Jonathan Tucker, Murphy visualises a sound that transcends epochs and style. The chanteuse of Americana Folk keeps her arrangements roots-deep and the air that she weaves through her sound weightless, resulting in a panoramic score that sweeps you up within its accordance.

Lyrically, Cut You Down delivers sheer vindication, which arrives through the sanctity within the moment you realise that someone you thought you couldn’t live without is someone who never deserved you, and it’s unlikely that they will ever replicate the beauty within that connection. This isn’t bitterness. It’s release. It’s wisdom echoing from the mouth of someone who no longer needs to look back.

Whiskey Hill, the Kansas City duo, channel the melancholy of joy and sorrow into compositions you feel in your bones. Their arrangements bleed the soil of the Midwest, their storytelling bends around grief, love, and lives still in motion. Through violin, mandolin, and guitar, they don’t imitate. They reveal. Their sound may sit beside folk icons, but Cut You Down affirms they are writing from their own carved-out corner.

Cut You Down is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

The Gillies Shattered Stirred Scarred Souls with Americana Folk Reverence in ‘It Hit Me Like a Bullet’

Posted on 29 April 2025
It Hit Me Like A Bullet by The Gillies

There’s no escaping the arcane aura of It Hit Me Like a Bullet, the latest release from the award-winning contemporary Americana folk duo, The Gillies. Through shimmering organ tones that swell around the arrangement and seraphically panoramic vocals, the single welcomes Americana Folk home on London’s streets. The Gillies – Susan Turner and Mark Evans – have long been revered for weaving steel-strung and tenor guitars into haunting odes to love, loss, and tangled relationships. True to their reputation for creating ‘music for your graveside’, they set raw emotions free without straying into needless theatrics.

It Hit Me Like a Bullet is salvation in sound, an invitation to tend psychological wounds no matter how raw. The imagery the cinematically intimate arrangement conjures transcends the more than a thousand words phenomenon, unchaining the soul, giving it permission to feel as free as the breezy melodies within the track.

If you know how it feels to find your feet after life broadsides you with perpetually unravelling perplexity, find your peace in the authentic euphony of It Hit Me Like a Bullet. The Gillies, whose previous works like ‘6am’ earned accolades such as Best Single in the GSMC Music Awards 2023 and selections for Fatea Magazine’s showcase sessions, continue to affirm why their understated melodies and timeless themes resonate on both local and international stages.

It Hit Me Like a Bullet is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Bandcamp. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast