The brand new October 2025 challenge of Uncut comes with a free CD – Quantity 7 of our much-loved Sounds Of The New West sequence.
The compilation contains 15 of our favorite new tracks from the world of Americana, nation, folks and roots rock, with an emphasis this time on the stranger, eerier facet of the continent.
There’s ragged, stumbling rock from the likes of Friendship, Case Oats, Wednesday and Florry, experimental Appalachian folks from Sally Anne Morgan and Joseph Decosimo, dour balladry from Jeffrey Martin and Eve Adams, and even ambient Americana from Shrunken Elvis.
See under for the total tracklisting and extra…
1 Friendship
Betty Ford
We begin our seventh quantity of Sounds Of The New West with this wonderful lower from the Philadelphia group’s fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up. Dan Wriggins weaves a mini-movie, impressed by watching a documentary on the lifetime of the previous First Girl, whereas behind him the group are laidback and ramshackle in all the proper methods.
2 Case Oats
Bitter Root Lake
The Chicago duo of Casey Walker and Spencer Tweedy have, with Final Missouri Exit, made one of many strongest debut albums of 2025 to date. Right here’s a spotlight from it, a gentle alt.nation charmer that remembers Vibrant Eyes at their greatest, particularly in Walker’s hallucinatory lyrics.
3 Eve Adams
Demise Valley Without end
That is the closing observe of Adams’ new album American Mud, impressed by the lonesome, remoted desert panorama within the American Southwest area she calls residence. Over a waltzing rhythm, piano and layered backing vocals, a reverb-soaked harmonica calls to thoughts the mirages of California’s Demise Valley.
4 Horsebath
Laborious To Love
Finest not let the identify put you off, for these Canadian cowboys are properly value corralling. On their debut album One other Farewell they marshall honky-tonk barroom piano, pedal metal and twanging Telecasters to create one thing midway between the Buckaroos and the Stones.
5 Souled American
Sorry State
These underground legends of other Americana are due again with a brand new and long-awaited album, Sanctions, sooner or later sooner or later, and this observe will likely be on it. “Sorry State” will not be as translucent and desperately drifting because the time-stretching songs on 1996’s Notes Campfire, but it surely nonetheless staggers enchantingly beneath Chris Grigoroff’s uncooked vocals.
6 Eli Winter
Black Iris On A Burning Quilt
This Houston-born, Chicago-based guitarist launched a wonderful report of expansive instrumental guitar, A Trick Of The Gentle, earlier this yr. Closing it’s this near-eight-minute epic, which strikes from fingerpicked prettiness to a distorted meltdown and eventually a beatific non secular jazz coda.
7 Gradual Movement Cowboys
Invisible Stars
New Orleans’ Gradual Movement Cowboys unveiled their beautiful Wolf Of Saint Elmo in April, and right here’s the opening observe, a splendidly melancholic gem that remembers prime Lambchop or Neil Younger at his most nation. Margo Cilker’s a fan, and has lined this track stay.
8 Anna Tivel
Airplane To Nowhere
Born in Washington State, Tivel moved to Portland, Oregon at 18 and has swiftly constructed up a powerful again catalogue over the past decade or so. Her new album Animal Poem is a quiet marvel, mixing folks, nation and jazz, the consequence resembling a extra rustic Huge Thief.
9 Wednesday
Decide Up That Knife
Bleeds is the sixth album from the Asheville group – led by Karly Hartzman and that includes MJ Lenderman – and maybe their greatest to date. They’re rooted within the humid drawl of Americana if filtered by way of the lens of Pavement’s “Father To A Sister Of Thought”, and infrequently obliterated by waves of hardcore distortion.
10 Shrunken Elvis
An Previous Outlet
On their self-titled debut album, Spencer Cullum, Wealthy Ruth and Sean Thompson – all solo artists in their very own proper – come collectively to supply some thrilling ambient Americana. At occasions it’s as if Harmonia had recorded by the Mississippi somewhat than the Weser, with Cullum’s pedal metal drifting weightlessly above the synths, drum machines and fluid lead guitar traces.
11 Julianna Riolino
Seed
This Toronto singer-songwriter is gearing as much as launch her second album, Echo In The Mud, in late October; her music is rooted in Americana, certain, however she cuts it with ragged storage on the likes of “On A Bluebird’s Wing” and, right here, swinging R&B balladry with a magnificently uncooked vocal.
12 Florry
Huge One thing
Coming collectively in Philadelphia after which exploding throughout the nation, the seven-piece Florry nonetheless managed to workforce as much as report this tattered, torn and super third LP. Over acoustic guitars, drums and fiddle, the group faucet into one thing unusual and visceral, greatest exemplified by Francie Medosch’s fevered yowls.
13 Sally Anne Morgan
Eye Is The First
There might be one thing deeply bizarre about folks music, and Sally Anne Morgan is aware of that higher than most. On her newest report, Second Circle The Horizon, she carries on the Appalachian folks custom with piercing electrical guitar choosing, discipline recordings, fiddle and all method of distinctive devices – the result’s spellbinding and sometimes eerie.
14 Jeffrey Martin
Edge Of Misplaced
2023’s Thank God We Left The Backyard was a placing return from the Portland-based musician; right here’s a current, and lovely, one-off single that continues the stark, confessional vibes. When he sings about feeling “to date down”, there’s no possibility however to imagine him fully.
15 Joseph Decosimo
Glory In The Meetinghouse
North Carolina’s Decosimo is an skilled in ‘old-time music’, and has lent his instrumental skills to recordings by Hiss Golden Messenger, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Wye Oak and extra. Fiery Gizzard is the most recent missive from his explorations; this piece mixes a fiddle jig with foreboding drones and rattling percussion, the Appalachian undergrowth all of the sudden feeling very shut.
