20 must-hear folk albums from 2020 (so far)

Last year, Bill Callahan released his first album in five years, the 20-song, hour-long double album Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, and he now returns just 13 and a half months later with ten more new songs, Gold Record. After taking so much time off before Shepherd, Bill must have really been hit with a creative spark, because he hasn't given us anything close to 30 songs in a one-year period since his Smog days in the mid '90s. And not only is he very prolific right now, he's on a roll quality-wise too. The Gold Record songs are at least as good as the Shepherd songs, and they're different enough to make Gold Record clearly its own distinct new album. Like its predecessor, these songs are minimal -- often with just Bill's voice, his acoustic guitar, and maybe a little light drumming or textural work in the background -- and Bill's delivery and lyricism is plainspoken and conversational. But each individual song is such a complete, compelling story on its own that they all feel like crucial additions to his catalog. It makes sense that Bill rolled this album out one song a week for ten weeks -- it's a cohesive album, but every single song stands tall on its own too.

The old cliche of "you have your whole life to write your first album" is especially true in Phoebe's case -- if you listen to some of that more obscure early material, you'll hear that some of the Stranger in the Alps songs had been in her arsenal for years and workshopped over and over. So it may have taken Punisher a while to come out, but for this album Phoebe didn't have the luxury of taking a song like "Georgia," playing it live for at least five years, and releasing an early, alternate version of it before coming out with the stunning arrangement the song has on Stranger in the Alps. (Especially in the age of YouTube and Instagram, established artists can't really road-test new songs if they want to keep them under wraps.) At the same time, Phoebe has come a long way since Stranger in the Alps and the Phoebe Bridgers who made Punisher has a whole new batch of tricks up her sleeve that she didn't have three years ago. Conor Oberst also sang on Stranger in the Alps and the album had a few exciting names behind the scenes (Mike Mogis, Rob Moose, John Doe), but Phoebe is now a masterful, chameleonic collaborator, and that's represented all over Punisher, which features Conor singing on two songs, her boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus singing on two songs, and contributions from Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner, Blake Mills, Warpaint's Jenny Lee Lindberg, Bright Eyes' Nate Walcott, Christian Lee Hutson, Tomberlin, and more. (It also features the same mixing and production team as her debut -- Mike Mogis, Tony Berg, and Ethan Gruska -- and features some of the same backing musicians, including Marshall Vore and longtime collaborator Harrison Whitford.) And though it's still Phoebe's name on the marquee and her face on the album cover, Punisher truly feels like a much more communal album than its predecessor. You could still picture Phoebe performing most of these songs solo if she wanted to, but your brain never draws up images of one person and their acoustic guitar when you listen. You notice the many guest vocalists, you notice the intricate arrangements, and it all swells together wonderfully. Full review here.

The Nashville Sound may have been Jason Isbell's return to making 400 Unit albums (though the members did play on Southeastern and Something More Than Free), but Reunions captures the energy of the band's live show in ways its predecessor didn't. Reunions is populated with fiery, show-stealing guitar solos, explosive hard rock choruses, and moments where all the musicians sound like they're feeding off of each other at once in a way that nears jam band territory. There's still as much Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen on Reunions as there was on the last album, but there's also stuff like the reggae-rock undercurrent of album opener "What've I Done To Help" that recalls late '70s Grateful Dead. (There's also literally some David Crosby, who sings on "What've I Done to Help" and "Only Children.") And even being a 400 Unit album, it has some bare-bones singer/songwriter songs that rival Southeastern and Something More Than Free too ("Dreamsicle," "Only Children," "St. Peter's Autograph"). Reunions is full of stuff that would sound wildly out of fashion in a lesser songwriter's hands, but Jason Isbell makes this music sound entirely relevant. He takes notes from the classic rock canon, but not in a way that comes off as reactionary to modern music. He makes familiar sounds feel fresh, he fills a void you might not've realized was there, and his subject matter resonates so much right now that these songs never feel like they're from any time but the present. Full review here.

Bob Dylan is back with his first album of new, original music in eight years -- 58 years after he released his debut album -- and it's the best record he's released in a long time. It's also a record that he only could have made now. It can't come off as a lesser version of his classic '60s and '70s work because it almost never sounds like that work. It hardly even sounds like Tempest. It's as close in spirit to Leonard Cohen's final recordings as Leonard's first album was to Dylan's early work. It's a little bit similar to the latest Nick Cave (who's a big fan of the album's lead single, "Murder Most Foul") album too. Dylan has taken on this speak-sung, stream-of-consciousness delivery that's been increasingly favored by late-career rock legends lately, and with it, he helps shape this new wave of music written by not-new artists. As someone who was never exactly, um, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan has long been hit with criticisms of "he can't sing," and as his voice became more gravelly in recent years, his singing started sounded even rougher than it did in the '60s. But on Rough and Rowdy Ways, he uses it to his advantage. Much more so than Tempest, these songs are perfectly suited to the way his voice sounds right now. Full review here.

In a 1975 Rolling Stone interview, Neil called his long-shelved-and-now-finally-released album Homegrown "the darker side to Harvest." With more hindsight, he called it "the missing link between Harvest, Comes a Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon" in Jimmy McDonough's 2002 Neil Young biography Shakey. Those albums are all on Neil's folkier, more acoustic side, and Homegrown is indeed cut from that cloth. As soon as you hear the opening of "Separate Ways," you're transported right back to the warmth of the Harvest era. It's of the same proto-slowcore variety of that album's opener "Out On the Weekend," but even more haunting and melancholic. Just 30 seconds in, and Homegrown already lives up to the description Neil gave Cameron Crowe of it 45 years ago.

That same mood carries over into second track "Try," which -- like "Separate Ways" -- features The Band's Levon Helm on drums, and Levon really managed to capture the bare-bones, slow-paced drumming style that these types of quietly revolutionary Neil Young songs always demanded. "Try" is also one of two songs on Homegrown with backing vocals by Emmylou Harris (the other being "Star of Bethlehem"), and her soaring voice makes for a truly lovely contrast with Neil's more somber delivery. And as melancholic as those songs are, they've got nothing on the melancholy of the entirely-solo cuts "Mexico" (voice and piano) and "Kansas" (voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica), or on "White Line," which features Neil, his acoustic, and his harmonica joined only by some lead guitar by The Band's Robbie Robertson. It's on those breathtaking songs where you can really hear why Neil -- coming right off the release of On The Beach -- might have felt like he was digging himself into a hole of dour, depressive music. But all these years later -- now that Neil has cemented his legacy over and over again and proven to be an artist who can evolve and adapt with the times without losing his own uniqueness -- those songs feel like buried treasure, especially for fans who gravitate towards his most hushed material. Full review here.

Ohio-born country singer Arlo McKinley released his debut album (as Arlo McKinley & the Lonesome Sound) back in 2014, and that album caught a few ears in the country scene, but it didn't make the mark that Arlo had hoped and he almost gave up on music entirely. One of the album's fans was Tyler Childers, who invited Arlo to open for him and sing on stage with him a few years later, and eventually that led to Arlo making a fan out of another famous person: the late, legendary John Prine, who signed Arlo to his Oh Boy Records label before passing away earlier this year. Arlo, now 40 years old, makes his Oh Boy debut with Die Midwestern, his first new music in six years and an album that's already shaping up to be a potential breakthrough. Die Western is more polished than Arlo's lo-fi debut -- he made it at Memphis' legendary Sun Studio with producer Matt Ross-Spang (Prine, Jason Isbell, Margo Price, etc) and a backing band of Ken Coomer (Uncle Tupelo, Wilco), Rick Steff (Cat Power, Hank Williams Jr.), and Reba Russell (Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison) -- so it sounds great, but it's not overly polished. Arlo comes from a punk/DIY background, and that mindset informs these songs as much as classic folk and country does. He especially reminds me of fellow Matt Ross-Spang collaborator Jason Isbell, and if you like Isbell's great new album, you may find that Die Midwestern pairs very well with it. Like a lot of great country singers, Arlo fills his songs with real-life hardships -- from heartbreak to addiction -- and when he opens his mouth to sing about everything he's been through in his 40 years on this planet, you feel it.

What seemed at first like a fun side project has turned into one of the year's most replayable albums. Bonny Light Horseman -- the new supergroup of Anais Mitchell, Eric D Johnson (Fruit Bats), and The National/Craig Finn/Hiss Golden Messenger/Josh Ritter collaborator (and now member of Paul Banks' new band Muzz) Josh Kaufman -- is steeped in centuries-old tradition, but they sound like a breath of fresh air. Their debut album is a mix of traditional folk songs (including the one they're named after) and originals, and Bonny Light Horseman often drastically rework the traditionals and make them entirely their own. It's an album that could appeal to fans of classic folk rock like Fairport Convention as much as to more recent indie folk acts like Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver (whose Justin Vernon appears on the album and released it on 37d03d, the label he runs with The National's Aaron Dessner, who also played on the album), and it's one of the most refreshing albums in this style to be released in recent memory.

Waxahatchee signed to Merge for her third album, 2015's Ivy Tripp, following the release of American Weekend and her breakthrough second LP Cerulean Salt on Don Giovanni. Five years and two albums later, she put out Saint Cloud at the end of March, and it's already being heralded as the best album of her career. With its earthy, twangy, country and folk influenced sound, Saint Cloud is a bit of a departure from her previous, more indie rock-flavored releases, but Waxahatchee brings sensitivity and depth to whatever style she works in. This album has drawn deserved comparisons to Lucinda Williams, and while it's early to be making predictions, it feels primed to have the same kind of staying power as Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

As the leader of The Mountain Goats, John Darnielle has remained highly prolific for his nearly-30-year career -- with 17 "proper" full-length albums and several EPs, cassettes, and other miscellaneous releases -- and it's pretty much all worth diving into. Having started out making beloved lo-fi recordings on a boombox, he eventually embraced real studios, producers, and things like keyboards and string arrangements, but those raw recordings still hold a special place in a lot of Mountain Goats fans' hearts, so it's a very cool thing that 2020 saw the release of The Mountain Goats' first boombox album since 2002's classic All Hail West Texas. It's a great record that should satisfy those with intense nostalgia for early Mountain Goats, but that sounds new and vital enough to feel like more than fan service. It's just John and his guitar, and it goes from upbeat songs that border on folk punk and anti-folk to somber, melancholic stuff, both of which Darnielle has always excelled at. He left banter between some of the songs, making it feel even more honest and human than the songs would have on their own, and on the album closer "Exegetic Chains," he adapts a lyric from the classic Mountain Goats song that seems to (sadly) resonate more with each passing year: "Make it through this year if it kills you outright."

You read that right, The Microphones in 2020. Phil Elverum (who retired the moniker in 2003 and has gone by Mount Eerie ever since) brought back the name he used for such classic albums as The Glow Pt. 2 for the first time in 17 years, and the result is a one-song, 44-minute album where he muses on the very idea of being "The Microphones." "There is too much focus on the title of a thing," Phil told us in a new interview. "Ideally, we can just make stuff without a title for it and without an identity for it. Things can just rest on their own merit, but that's too idealistic [laughs] and impossible." You can read much more about this excellent new album here.

As if a new Microphones album and a Mountain Goats boombox album in 2020 isn't enough early 2000s lo-fi singer/songwriter nostalgia, we also got an entire, never-before-heard album by the late Jason Molina (Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co), who tragically passed away in 2013 at age 39 from complications related to alcoholism. This isn't the first time that posthumous Jason Molina music has been released -- in 2019, Secretly Canadian released Love & Work: The Lioness Sessions, featuring nearly an album's worth of previously unreleased songs from the same era as Songs: Ohia's 2000 classic The Lioness -- but Eight Gates is the first complete collection of songs that Jason himself had envisioned as an album and just never was able to release. It's the last thing he was working on before his death, and it's a reminder that Jason was a creative force until his very last day and that he was taken from us way too soon. The last album he released in his lifetime, Magnolia Electric Co's 2009 album Josephine, was a little brighter and a little more alt-country than Jason's classic turn-of-the-millennium work, but Eight Gates is a melancholic, bare-bones album that really captures the same spirit as the early 2000s Songs: Ohia material. Like those albums, it's devastating to listen to -- especially now, given his fate -- and the songwriting is as compelling as Jason's ever was.

Laura Marling's followup to 2017's Semper Femina was originally supposed to come out later this year, but while several artists are delaying albums due to COVID-19, Laura pushed the release of hers up because of it. "I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and at its best, provide some sense of union... I want you to have it," she says. As the title implies, this one was inspired by Laura's own daughter -- "how would I guide my daughter, arm her and prepare her for life and all of its nuance?" It was also produced mostly by Laura herself (with some assistance from longtime collaborators Ethan Johns and Dom Monks), and even more so than Semper Femina, it finds Laura returning to the warmer, earthier sounds of her earlier material. Laura does say the album was partially inspired by "the fragmentary, nonsensical experience of trauma" too, but still, there's something comforting about it. It feels nostalgic and lived-in and whenever I put it on, it provides some escapism from all the shittiness of daily life. I know a lot of the delayed album releases are happening because artists want to be able to promote them on tour, so we should not take it for granted that Laura was gracious enough to put this out in the world at a time when we need it most.

While associated with staunch indie rock snobbery, Stephen Malkmus has long dabbled in jam band territory, all the way back to Pavement’s final album, Terror Twilight. (Before? Maybe.) So when he announced Traditional Techniques, his third album in three years, as “stoner folk” it wasn’t really as much of a stretch as Matador may have wanted you to believe. At least not in that way. It is, however, his quietest, most introspective and straight-from-the-heart record he’s ever made. Read the full review.) 

New Zealand singer/songwriter Nadia Reid slowly but surely started to take off in the US after releasing her excellent 2017 album Preservation, and now she's signed to a US label (Spacebomb) and finally back with a followup album, Out of My Province. Joining the Spacebomb family not only gave Nadia more visibility in the US, it also allowed her to work with the label's in-house production team of Matthew E. White and Trey Pollard, who have earned themselves a reputation for their grand string arrangements thanks to their work on recent albums by Foxygen, Natalie Prass, Bedouine, and more. The strings do wonders for Out of My Province, which is a beautiful sounding record and the most massive sounding album Nadia has released yet. But as much of a sell as they are, Nadia never relies on any of the embellishments to drive these songs home. Just like her first two records, Out of My Province brings you to the edge of your seat with the power of Nadia's words and voice alone.

British folk singer Bill Fay released two classic albums in the early '70s (1970's Bill Fay and 1971's Time of the Last Persecution), but his career came to a halt until his work was rediscovered in the internet era, earning Bill cult status and gaining him a new fanbase within the modern-day indie rock community. He's gone on to have a mutually appreciative relationship with Wilco and Current 93, and he signed to indie rock label Dead Oceans early last decade, for whom he released his first new album in over 40 years, 2012's Life Is People. (Okkervil River, The War on Drugs, AC Newman, and others have also covered his work, and one of his most famous fans is Nick Cave.) The new album proved that Bill Fay still had plenty more to say, as did its 2015 followup Who Is the Sender?, and now Bill is back with his third comeback-era album and first in five years, Countless Branches, which finds him continuing to write and sing gorgeous songs, half a century removed from his debut. Like his last two albums, it was recorded with producer Joshua Henry, but they took a slightly more stripped-back approach this time, recording much of the album with just Bill, his piano, and "some rudimentary home recording equipment." Bill of course has the resources to make something much grander sounding at this point in his career, but he sounds best at his most intimate so it's a real treat that he chose to make the new album this way. Also a nice treat is the bonus tracks on the deluxe version of this album, which include some full-band versions of songs that ended up in solo form on Countless Branches, providing even more context for how intimate Bill and Joshua chose to make this album sound. The bonus tracks also include a solo version of "Your Little Face" which does appear in full-band form on the main album, a live-in-studio version of "Don't Let My Marigolds Die" from Time of the Last Persecution, and some other non-album tracks. It's a truly essential addition to a long-established catalog, and it's not everyday you see that from an artist with this much history.

Lancaster, PA’s Innocence Mission started out three decades ago as a dream pop band with an alt-rock backbone, but after drummer Steve Brown left for a culinary career, the group saw it as an opportunity to explore a more delicate, folkier side, beginning with 1999’s Birds of My Neighborhood. They’ve never looked back and have been all the better for it. See You Tomorrow is The Innocence Mission’s 12th album and one of their best, with Karen Peris’ heartbreaking voice as always the star of the show. Songs like the demure “At Lake Maureen,” “On Your Side” and “St. Francis and the Future” offer shards of dust-speckled light for that voice to ride upon, with arrangements that never overpower but also offer wonderful surprises, like when the strings and percussion kick in midway through opener “The Brothers Williams Said.” It’s a beautiful strain of melancholy that Peris imbues in these songs, tinged ever so slightly with nostalgia, like that first chilly night in August that has you reaching for a sweater, knowing summer’s days are numbered.

After two albums on Universal Republic, The Secret Sisters (aka real-life sisters Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle) were dropped by their major label which put the fate of the band in question, but then Brandi Carlile took them under her wing. She had them open for her and produced their third album You Don't Own Me Anymore, which came out in 2017 on alt-country label New West Records, and this year the sisters and Brandi teamed up again for another record on New West, the gorgeous Saturn Return. The album is named after the astrological phenomenon that represents reaching full adulthood, and it followed some monumental life changes for the sisters; both became pregnant during the making of the album and they lost both of their grandmothers around that same time. "We were still just trying to figure out how you go forward in life without the strong matriarch," Laura told The Boot. You can hear how these life changes impacted these personal songs -- which, unlike their previous albums, were written without co-writers -- though Saturn Return also finds the sisters looking outside of themselves, like on the powerful "Cabin," which was written from the perspective of a woman who has been assaulted, and was written around the time of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. "This song was our way of saying, ‘We hear you, and we know it hurts…we know you’re not over it and that’s okay,'" said Laura. The power in the lyrics is matched by that of the music - warm, timeless Americana that would fit nicely next to anything from late '70s Fleetwood Mac to the new Jason Isbell album. Brandi's production is the perfect match, and she also encouraged the sisters to break from their trademark close harmony style and each sing some songs on their own, which very much worked to their benefit. Fans of their harmonies need not worry though -- there are still plenty of those, and they're as lush as you'd hope.

As Courtney herself said, songs about heartbreak are nothing new, but Courtney does it without ever falling victim to cliches. The songwriting on this album clearly comes straight from the heart, and the earthy tone of the music feels just as authentic as the lyricism. Courtney made the album with frequent Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo, Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia, and Big Thief collaborator (and Twain member) Matthew Davidson, so it's easy to draw comparisons to Big Thief, and like much of that band's work, Old Flowers is indie rock-friendly Americana that sounds modest but crystal clear. "We agreed to prioritize making this record as cathartic and minimal as possible—focusing on Courtney’s voice and her intention behind the songs," Andrew Sarlo said, and that comes across. Old Flowers is more stripped-back than Courtney's music has been in a while -- or maybe ever -- and all-around more somber too, and this more minimal approach suits her even better than her more fleshed-out last album did.

A lot of people were introduced to Becca Mancari as a member of Bermuda Triangle alongside Brittany Howard, but Becca had also released her debut solo album Good Woman right around the same time Bermuda Triangle put out their first single, and Good Woman proved Becca was a worthwhile artist in her own right. It's one of the past few years' true gems; an alt-country record with an indie rock edge and truly timeless songwriting. For its followup The Greatest Part, Becca signed to Captured Tracks -- an indie pop label who at this point are probably best known for signing Mac DeMarco -- and she produced it with Paramore drummer Zac Farro, who also makes Tame Impala-esque psych-pop as Halfnoise. (Plus, there's backing vocals on "First Time" and "I'm Sorry" by Julien Baker.) The Greatest Part is probably the first album to ever make "Captured Tracks," "country," and "Paramore" one degree of separation from each other, and you can hear the center point of that unique venn diagram in the sound of these songs as much as you can see it on paper. Zac's influence is felt in the psych-pop guitar work that pops up from time to time, and much more so than Good Woman, this album has an indie/dream pop side that sounds right at home on Captured Tracks. Becca hasn't abandoned her folk/country roots, though, and the fusion of all of these sounds makes for an album that breaks down even more musical boundaries than Good Woman did. The sounds that Becca experiments with on this album are new, but what hasn't changed is how impactful her songwriting and delivery is. She still has a knack for wrapping powerful storytelling in warm melodies, and delivering each word in a way that captures your attention and doesn't let it go.

Ben's yearning delivery and earthy melodies are a little alt-country, but the songs are covered in an atmospheric indie rock haze (think Yo La Tengo or Broken Social Scene), and sometimes things can really come crashing down in a louder alternative rock kind of way (not unlike, say, early Manchester Orchestra). Ben also explores his personal relationship with Christianity throughout the album, and gospel is at least somewhat of a reference point here too. The song that auto-plays on Bandcamp is the seven and a half minute centerpiece "Am I Doing Right By You," which is probably the obvious standout, but the whole album is great.