ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
September 6, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
WHAT's SO GREAT ABOUT THiS WEEK?!!
Leon Bridges, "Laredo" Leon (Columbia, Oct 4)
Leon Bridges' 2015 debut LP was a great surprise. The Texas retro soul artist has released a couple albums and a ton of singles since then, but nothing has landed with the same appeal as Coming Home (though Bridges' pair of EP's with Khruangbin were a satisfying change of pace). This second single from his October Leon collection strikes a similar chord as that first stuff. Bridges calls the song a journey back to the roots, a return to what truly matters, inspired by early border town memories.
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Chaparelle, "Sex & Rage" single (Western Pleasure, Sep 6)
Should we have heard about this duo by now? Chaparelle is a duo of Zella Day and Jesse Woods, making an intriguing cocktail of noirish country-soul. This is their second single to date, which means we won't declare Chaparelle Something Truly Special until further notice. For today, please just count us as pleasantly distracted.
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Ben Chapman, "Downbeat" Downbeat (Hippie Shack, Dec 13)
From Nashville by way of Georgia, Chapman has already released a handful of cuts from his late-year release, though we're apparently just getting around to it now. Produced with Anderson East and written with the great under-utilized Mando Saenz, "Downbeat" carries country into a disreputable, swampy joint, This place gets scary after dark / Buying cocaine in the parking lot. Chapman's songs have been performed by acts like Flatland Cavalry, Steel Woods, and Shelby Lynne, so it's high time we hear from the man himself.
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Damien Jurado, "Des Moines" single (Maraqopa, Sep 2)
Sometime in the recent past, Damien Jurado declared that he was pretty much done with the traditional single single single album grind, and simply wanted to write music that satisfied his own artistic needs. Since then, his output has been relatively sporadic, rarely publicized, and pretty difficult to notice. "Des Moines" was released this week with a revisit of "Sheets" from his very good 2008 Caught In the Trees record. Another in the Seattle artist's odes to American towns, it's a beautifully foggy acoustic number, brushed with strings and the echo of pedal steel.
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Dwight Yoakam, "I Don't Know How To Say Goodbye (Bang Bang Boom Boom)" Brighter Days (Via, Nov 15)
Dwight Yoakam's first records served as a gateway drug to country music for a generation of hip indie kids like us. Even after he had crested his impressive popular mainstream heights, Yoakam's output was consistently strong and reliably true to form. Nine years (!) since his last release, the legend has announced Brighter Days with the release of a cut with the ubiquitous Post Malone. While the success of his own F-1 Trillion is a topic for another Episode, it's a pairing that works well here. As the headliner nears seventy, his delivery has aged just a touch, though he remains unmistakably Dwight Yoakam.
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