ROUTES-cast March 9, 2025

ROUTES & BRANCHES

featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music

March 9, 2025

Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

One of our disappointments in trimming back our offerings lately is that there's been such a run of very good songs and records. We recognize that your listening time is very valuable, however, and most of us barely have enough to revisit our favorites now and then, let alone dig deeply into what's new an less familiar. This brings us to our first foray back into content outside of our Sunday Spotify ROUTES-cast. We're feeling pretty good about calling it:

If You Only Listen To One Record This Week

By our count, there were around twenty (20) releases this week, not to mention countless others outside our area of focus (what we fondly term our kind of music). The idea here is that we'll tag just one record that we think you'll really really enjoy. Rather than a formal review, we'll simply tell you why it merits your attention. 

This week that one album is Big Ugly, the third full-length of North Carolina's Fust. Where Genevieve was a very satisfying collection, and Songs Of the Rail told an interesting story of Fust's early evolution, Big Ugly advances a more complete idea. Fronted by Aaron Dowdy and produced by Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Wednesday), the record fits into that current Carolina alt.country explosion, but sets itself apart with Dowdy's marriage of story and mystery, song and drone. 

Well worth your while in its own right, Genevieve was a thicker, clamorous album, its imagery as shrouded as its sonics. Big Ugly takes great strides in clearer song structure and in sound, with pedal steel assuming a central role and Libby Rodenbough's fiddle and backing vocal proving essential as well. Dowdy's pathetic love stories are dusted with the stories, sounds, and places of the south. A PhD candidate at Duke, he is a skilled navigator of this mythology, never giving into tropes or stereotypes, steering well clear of romanticizing the down-and-outs and the original sinners. 

Songs like "Spangled" and "Bleached" are confident, full-throttle rockers presented with pedal steel, piano, and fuzz guitar. On "Spangled", the narrator haunts bridges and ditches: I'm feeling like heaven / I'm feeling like a sparkler / That's been thrown off a roof / And left floating off VA-305. Fust can rage like Drive-by Truckers, but can also exercise restraint like Magnolia Electric Co on the shimmering "What's His Name". On the bluesy "Sister", we're Wrecked, wounded, wore down. 

The songs of Big Ugly are a weave of the personal and the poetic, naming names then departing into a spangled reverie. From the hooky "Mountain Language": You can't even find work at the Country Boy / Selling gas station drugs / To take care of your sister Dallas. The electric buzz from Genevieve remains, but takes its proper place alongside more clear instrumental statements as the members of Fust continue to explore their identity as a band. 

How have I been, Dowdy wonders on the pretty "Heart Song", Have I been okay at living. This new project is a phenomenal step forward for Fust, beautifully broken but capable of great melody and genuine feeling. Like Richard Buckner's watermark Devotion + Doubt, Big Ugly  is a terrific blend of quiet and noise, with Dowdy and cohort setting the early bar for the year's best album. If you listen to nothing else this week ... 

... but if you want to listen to many more records, you could do worse than to spend some time staring at A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster, our routinely updated new release calendar. This week, we added forthcoming stuff from artists that matter like Bones Of JR Jones, I'm With Her, Dallas Ugly, James Bradley Earl, Dean Johnson, and so many more. 

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ROUTES-cast March 9, 2025

^ Fust, "Gateleg" Big Ugly  (Dear Life, 25)

- Sarah Jane Scouten, "Sweetest Homewrecker" single  (Light Organ, 25)  D

- Tobacco City, "Colorado" Horses  (Scissor Tail, 25)

- Silver Synthetic, "Age Of Infamy" Rosalie  (Curation, 25)

- Jack Van Cleaf, "Smoker" JVC  (Dualtone, May 9)

- Ken Pomeroy, "Days Getting Darker" Cruel Joke  (Rounder, May 16)

- Charles Wesley Godwin, "Hammer Down (ft Scott Avett)" Lonely Mountain EP  (Big Loud, 25)

- Caroline Spence, "Sound Of You" single  (Spence, 25)  D

- Low Gap, "Churches" single  (Low Gap, 25)  D

- Clay Street Unit, "Let's Get Stoned" single  (Sony, 25)  D

- Sierra Hull, "Muddy Water" Tip Toe High Wire  (Hull, 25)

- I'm With Her, "Ancient Light" Wild and Clear and Blue  (Rounder, May 9)  D

- Jason Isbell, "Gravelweed" Foxes In the Snow  (Southeastern, 25)

- Kassi Valazza, "Your Heart's a Tin Box" From Newman Street  (Fluff & Gravy, May 2)

- Bones Of JR Jones, "Savages" Radio Waves  (Bones, Jun 20)  D

- Jess Kerber, "I Wonder If I'll Forget This" single  (Felte, 25)  D

- Adam Melchor, "Suburban Siddartha" Diary Of Living  (Many Hats, May 23)  D

- Paco Cathcart, "Bottleneck Blues" Down On Them  (Wharf Cat, May 5)  D

- Will Stratton, "Red Crossed Star" Points Of Origin  (Bella Union, 25)

- Dean Johnson, "Blue Moon" single  (Saddle Creek, 25)  D

- Valerie June, "Sweet Things Just For You" Owls Omens and Oracles  (Concord, Apr 11)

- Anderson East, "Chasing You" Worthy  (Rounder, May 30)  

- Lucy Rose, "Pale Blue Eyes" single  (Rose, 25)  D

- Lucius, "Impressions (ft Madison Cunningham)" Lucius  (Fantasy, May 2)

- Case Oats, "Seventeen" single  (Merge, 25)  D

- Jerry David DeCicca, "Knives (ft BJ Cole)" Cardiac Country  (JDD, Apr 25)

- James Bradley Earl, "Let the Snow Fall" Four Songs EP  (Woodsist, Mar 21)  D

- Ophelias, "Salome" Spring Grove  (Get Better, Apr 4)

- Hard Quartet, "Lies (Something You Can Do)" single  (Matador, 25)  D

- Ags Connolly, "Corner Of My Street" single  (Finstock, 25)  D

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