Here are some of the top new releases for the week of 27/03/2020.
All of this week’s new tracks are also on our New Release Round-up playlist on Spotify, along with every other song we’ve included in this feature during the year so far. If you’re a Spotify user, give it a follow so you can keep up to date!
Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit – Only Children
Jason Isbell releases another song ahead of his new album Reunions, and with each new track he raises his own bar. A beautiful, sparse, haunting track about a pair of “over-encouraged only children” growing up as friends and going through the trials of life, accompanied by harmony vocals from Amanda Shires.
Kip Moore – Wild World
A welcome surprise of a new song from Kip Moore. A smooth, slinky groove along similar lines to Wild Ones, but where that track was a rousing anthem for the wildcats, the fighters and the midnight up all nighters, Wild World sees a mother dispensing some advice for life to a son, for example, “Don’t put your faith in the green of a dollar | And be proud of the blue around your collar | Give a little more, take a little less | You ain’t done till you done your best | Wear it on your sleeve instead of hidden in your chest”
Lainey Wilson – WWDD
Written by Lainey along with Casey Beathard and Michael Heeney, this track is Lainey at her “go big” best. A stomping drum beat and layers of fuzzy guitars lay the base for Lainey to preach her “What Would Dolly Do?” mantra for life – “My go to compass and my golden rule”.
Josh Abbott Band – Catching Fire
The title track from a live, acoustic re-recording of last year’s Catching Fire EP. The whole EP has a really warm, orgnaic feel thanks to the live, single take recordings. Hope, redemption, forgiveness are the central themes of this affirming anthem.
Brent Cobb – The End Of The World
Brent wrote this song around the time the whole “Mayan calendar running out of days” thing was putting the wind up people a few years ago. Unreleased until now, it’ll be interesting to see how its mix of minor chord portentious mood and outright cynical lyric will go down right now. But we can’t exist on a non-stop diet of happy-clappy stuff, right? So, maybe now is as good a time as any.
Hayes Carll & Allison Moorer – That’s The Way Love Goes
A tender version of the Lefty Frizzell song made famous by Merle Haggard. Acoustic guitars, upright bass and fiddles set the base for Carll’s gritty growl to blend with Moorer’s sweet vocal for a cover that brings out the romance in both the lyric and the melody.
Randy Rogers & Wade Bowen – Hold My Beer
You might have expected this to have featured on the co-lab’s Hold My Beer Vol 1. album from 2015, as it seems an obvious title track. So obvious, in fact, that they’re putting on Hold My Beer Vol 2. It’s a bar-room rocker telling tales of the friends’ various encounters requiring one or the other to “hold my beer”, as “Good friends and bad decisions just go hand in hand | And it’s good to know you have somebody who’s got your back | And got your can”.
Cody Jinks – Fast Lane
Here’s a track that Cody has been playing live for years, having first featured on his hard to find 2008 album Cast No Stones. Apparently it’s an out-take from his 2015 Adobe Sessions. Sounds too good to be an out-take to us.
The Statesboro Revue w/ Wade Bowen – Sinner, Saint, SOB
This down and dirty, shuffling bluesy number is the first recording from The Statesboro Revue since 2015 (that year keeps cropping up in this week’s roundup…). And according to the band themselves they hadn’t planned on releasing it now but in light of current circumstances they thought again. And the essential message of the song is just right for now, explaining how we’re all a little bit sinner, a little bit saint and a little bit S.O.B. – none of us are better than the rest, so let’s all just try treat each other with that in mind.