featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
April 12, 2026
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
We race into today faced with a load of really good singles, though not a lot of essential listening in terms of complete records. We'd recommend Cactus Lee's new project, and will draw your attention as well to the return of Kevn Kinney and Drivin N Cryin, which features contributions from Peter Buck and Sadler Vaden. But ...
IF YOU ONLY LiSTEN to ONE RECORD THiS WEEK
Americana and alt.country music are not hard to mock. It's not tough to pretend to be a roots band. Novelty can be as rare as an album or two per season, artists who push the boundaries and surprise with their sound. There is not an inauthentic moment on Brown Horse's third full-length, Total Dive (Loose). The British alt.roots quintet are becoming invaluable, delivering haunted, hammered songs that point forward far more than they reach back.
With our radar always working overtime, we brought Brown Horse to your attention upon the release of 2024's Reservoir, and placed last year's All the Right Weaknesses at the rarified Number 9 spot of our year-end favorites. Even in the wake of that herald, Total Dive startles as it both expands and sharpens the outfit's sonic footprint. "Sorrow Reigns" announces the record's arrival with a Sabbath-heavy burst of guitar, frontman Patrick Turner proclaiming from within a visceral vision: In the tangle of stained hands / A stranger takes his life out on another man / Just because he can. Brown Horse's sound has grown thick and claustrophobic, their lyrics crowded with animal bones and roaring pyre.
While Turner's throaty, quaking voice is as recognizable as any other in our kind of music, Brown Horse is a true band, each of the members contributing to writing even as the final product remains impressively consistent. Special merit is owed to pedal steel and bass player Emma Tovell, who plays without quoting predecessors, her instrument defining Total Dive almost as much as Turner's delivery. Her steel embodies a bagpipe one moment and a metal guitar the next. On "Oblivion", Tovell drives the chorus alongside Rowan Braham's accordion. The same holds true for the melodic "Twisters", a highlight which demonstrates the band's ability to rein their roar into something more tuneful: Moonlight pooling in the backs of cars / Clothes drying on a wire fence.
Brown Horse's third project in as many years never sounds rushed, but unfolds with patience and urgency. "Comeback Loading" typifies the band's lyrical care, building tunes that can be expansive and mysterious even as they plumb our collective psychic landscape: Do you find yourself thinking that there should've been more to a life that hadn't started yet. On "Heart Of the Country", Turner recalls Jason Molina's essential Magnolia Electric Co: I keep your poems in a biscuit tin / With the bones of the mice that the cat dragged in.
Through their static and heaviosity, Brown Horse remain entirely accessible. On a recent short for Brooklyn Vegan, the members sang the praises of records that inspired Total Dive, tagging treasures by Richard Buckner, Freakwater, Molina, and others. Those influences are evident on their new collection, but in the end it is a noise entirely their own, a beautiful commotion that will doubtlessly echo into our best-of lists as we celebrate the music that defined the year: You spoke a new word that / Rhymed right with the feeling ...
ROUTES-cast April 12, 2026
^ Brown Horse, "Comeback Loading" Total Dive (Loose, 26)
- Thomas Dollbaum, "Coyote (ft MJ Lenderman)" Birds Of Paradise (Dear Life, May 22)
- Alabama Shakes, "American Dream" single (Island, 26) D
- Deer Tick, "Everything Born" Coin-O-Matic (ATO, Jun 5)
- Drivin N Cryin, "Crushing Flowers" Crushing Flowers (DNC, 26)
- Limbeck, "Kooks (Are What We Are)" single (Bearhouse, 26) D
- Futurebirds, "Sleepless In the Cage" Far Out Country (Dualtone, Sep 4)
- Rose Hotel, "My Satellite" single (Strolling Bones, 26)
- Samantha Crain, "Belly" single (Crain, 26) D
- River Shook, "Wildlands" single (Blackberry River, 26) D
- Mildred, "Pitch Boats" Fenceline (Dog Day, Apr 24)
- Ramsey Thornton, "Dripping Coffee" I Called It! (Gar Hole, May 15)
- Willow Avalon, "Cardinal Sin (ft Jason Isbell)" Pink Pocket Pistol (Atlantic, Jun 26) D
- Cactus Lee, "Lee's Dream" Lee's Dream (Western Vinyl, 26)
- Hayes Carll & Corb Lund, "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)" single (New West, 26) D
- Michaela Anne, "B-Sides" These Are the Days (Georgia June, May 8)
- SUSTO, "Hands In the Dirt" SUSTO Stringband Vol 2 (SUSTO, May 29)
- William Matheny, "Mercy Journeys" Material Witness (Diamond Teeth, Jul 10) D
- Tenille Townes, "Grey Like Emmylou (ft I'm With Her)" the acrobat (Township Road, 26)
- Lily Meola, "You and I" Lucky To Be (Nettwerk, Jul 17) D
- Hrishikesh Hirway, "Things Change Even Now" In the Last Hour Of Light (Keeled Scales, Apr 24)
- Allison Russell, "No Springtime (ft Joy Oladokun, Julie Williams)" single (Fantasy, 26) D
- Teddy Thompson, "Baby It's You" Never Be the Same (Royal Potato Family, May 15)
- Aldous Harding, "Venus In the Zinnia" Train On the Island (4AD, May 8)
- Josiah and the Bonnevilles, "Going Gone" As Is (Rounder, May 8)
- Aubory Bugg, "I Think I Had Something Once" single (Dualtone, 26) D
- Kiki Cavazos, "Pedestal" Goodbye Blues (Jalopy, Apr 24)
- Alex Amen, "Diamonds" Sun Of Amen (ATO, Jun 12)
- Zoh Amba, "Another Time" Eyes Full (Matador, Jun 5) D
- Maisy Owen, "Dark On a Sunny Day" Dark On a Sunny Day (Tompkins Square, May 1) D
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