americana
SEE: The video for Julia Jacklin’s ‘to Perth, before the border closes’ from her new Sub Pop 7″
IN MID-March, superb Australian alt.folk singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin was just one show from finishing a 12-month world tour for her second album, Crushing, when Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, announced the country would be restricting large gatherings due to the ‘rona. Within a week state borders had shut, and the three-month planned gap in Julia’s touring schedule has …
SEE: The video for Fleet Foxes’ ‘Can I Believe You’, from their surprise fourth
IT CAME as a surprise to most when, on last month’s autumn equinox, Fleet Foxes suddenly unveiled their new album, Shore. It’s full of the same wonderful, ethereal and warm folk harmonies we’ve come to expect from them across their 14-year recording career, a career that’s featured such breathless peaks as Helplessness Blues. Do you …
TRACK: Mountain Goats – ‘Picture Of My Dress’: yearning Americana ahead of next week’s album; live stream news
MOUNTAIN GOATS have dropped just one more track ahead of next week’s new album, Getting Into Knives – and they’ve gone with the acoustic Americana excellence of “Picture Of My Dress”. Have a listen to a touching and understated number below. It’s reported that the song’s creation happened in plain sight, beginning with a single tweet …
ALBUM REVIEW: Kevin Morby – ‘Sundowner’: simple acoustic truths deliver great profundity
Sundowner is a much more bucolic work than last year’s Oh My God. in Kansas he’s explored the simple complexity of the 60s’ folk-troubadour aesthetic and pulls it off, admirably. It’s a damn lovely record.
Track: Rhyal Knight – Summer’s Over Soon
Rhyal Knight’s released “Summer’s Over Soon” as single via Grumpy Bastard Recordings. It’s his first single from the forthcoming album, Tresxha Clarity. Overdriven guitar and great vocals sees Rhyal Knight create some great-sounding Americana pop. Strong drum beats and floating synths fill in the gaps on this perfectly produced track. Check it out, here: Find out …
SEE: The video for Mountain Goats’ ‘Get Famous’, their first in five years
THE MOUNTAIN GOATS are primed and ready on the starting grid for the release of their new album, Getting Into Knives, on October 23rd; and for the first time in five years they’ve stepped out in front of a rolling camera and put together a video for the recently released single, “Get Famous”. We dived into “Get …
Premiere: Westberg reveal new EP ‘Boomer Studies’ – stream exclusively here
Westberg, aka husband and wife duo Ariel Westberg and multi-platinum pop/electronic producer Scott Bruzenak, are gearing up for the release of their forthcoming EP, Boomer Studies, and we’re delighted to premiere it in full right here on Backseat Mafia. Of the EP, the pair say “This is our mid-life crisis EP about being Gen X …
PREMIERE: Free Country – ‘The Life Of Riley’: wistful, essential lofi from his hometown basement
FREE COUNTRY is the indie pop project of LA’s Jason Ribadeneyra, a man with an ear for a wistful, low-key melody delivered with weary truth in his voice. Tomorrow he releases his latest six-tracker, the introverted, pretty-as, guitar and piano indie pop stylings of The Life of Riley; but tomorrow, as Annie sings so famously, …
TRACK: hear the excellent cosmic pop of Elvis Perkins’ ‘See Monkey’:
ELVIS PERKINS, the sculptor of fine indie songsmithery in the great American tradition, has shared another excellent slice of melody ahead of his fifth album, Creation Myths, which will be out come October 2nd on MIR/Petaluma Records. And for this, his fifth album and his first full-length venture since his 2017 soundtrack The Blackcoat’s Daughter, …
Track: Sally Anne Morgan releases ‘Polly On The Shore’
It’s getting mighty crowded in the psych-folk district right now. So to stand out you need that little something else … enter Sally Anne Morgan. A fiddler, banjo player and vocalist with a growing reputation as a member of the Black Twig Pickers and the duo House and Land, the time is so right for …