Nashville music

Sara Jean Kelley: “Bleeding Stone”

Like many Americana artists, Nashville native Sara Jean Kelley grew up with an adoration for nature and has since continued to explore how us humans interact with the world that’s grown around us, be it for better or worse. Kelley first put those thoughts on record with her 2013 debut The Waiting Place, revealing the singer-guitarist’s bleak-but-humorous honesty within her lyrics while showcasing her infectiously twangy guitar and vocals reminiscent of Lucinda Williams or Patti Griffin. On the heels of her 2019 EP The Wild, Sara Jean Kelley’s set to share yet another rock-leaning meditation on the human condition and the laws of nature with Black Snake, out this Friday. Though Black Snake was tracked in just two days, you can hear how much care was put into these six rustic originals that’ll slither right into your heart without making you hiss, heard most recently with “Bleeding Stone”.

Brandy Zdan: “The Worst Thing”

Canada’s Brandy Zdan may have settled into her current home base of Nashville back in 2014, but the preceding three years she spent here in Austin was plenty enough to win over a following. This year Zdan’s zeroing in on Falcon, the full-length follow-up to her 2018 sophomore release Secretear that’s set to spread its wings at the end of the month.

Falcon features some of Zdan’s most personal reflections to date, and is a testament to how far this take-no-guff multi-instrumentalist-producer has soared in the rock aurora. Hear Zdan soar with Falcon on October 29th and get on the wing early with one of the record’s very best, “The Worst Thing“!

Ida Mae: “Little Liars”

As partners in both marriage and songwriting, Stephanie Jean and Chris Turpin’s undeniable chemistry has allowed them to easily negotiate the challenges faced by any musical two-piece. Under the name Ida Mae, their ebullient bond won the world over with their 2019 debut LP Chasing Lights, right around the same time they relocated from London to Nashville.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to determine what happened between 2019 and now, but Ida Mae’s re-emerging from the pandemic with an exceptional LP, Click Click Domino. The duo isn’t playing any games on Click Click Domino, which drops tomorrow, and you can creep into its sound early with the eery, sweet-but-sinister, “Little Liars“!

No-No Boy: “Imperial Twist”

Without getting too much into politics, I think we can all agree that the Asian-American experience has recently been catapulted into the national spotlight. And in concern to the historical context of that experience, nobody’s captured it in recent music as comprehensively as Nashville-born songwriter Julian Saporiti.

Appropriating the moniker No-No Boy from John Okada’s 1957 novel of the same name, Saporiti’s Ph.D. dissertation took him across the country to several Asian-American landmarks, often wrought with troubled history, to develop his concept album 1975. Saporiti’s dissection of what constitutes American folk isn’t obscured by his outspoken societal observations; rather the two march hand-in-hand across 1975’s dozen, sonically channeling the likes of Okkervil River, Shearwater, Grateful Dead, and The Avett Brothers while lyrically rising to the challenge of telling American folk tales from a different perspectives, perhaps heard best on “Imperial Twist”.