You picked Silverada – Living Proof as your favorite new release for the week of August 7, 2026.
Now & Then: GA-20 with Charlie Musselwhite’s BLUES NOW and the reach of Hoodoo Man Blues
GA-20 and Charlie Musselwhite’s BLUES NOW is built around a simple idea: keep the band lean, leave room in the arrangements, and let the interaction between guitar, harmonica, and voice carry the record. That makes Junior Wells’ 1965 Hoodoo Man Blues a useful predecessor. The two albums come from very different moments, but both treat electric blues as band music first, with little interest in unnecessary studio polish.
Readers’ Pick: GA-20 with Charlie Musselwhite – BLUES NOW
You picked GA-20 with Charlie Musselwhite – BLUES NOW as your favorite new release for the week of July 31, 2026.
Now & Then: Brand New Heartache’s A New Alchemy and the reach of In Spite of Ourselves
Brand New Heartache’s A New Alchemy fits into a long country tradition: two singers using harmony and disagreement to tell the truth about a relationship. The clearest earlier reference point is John Prine’s In Spite of Ourselves, a record that treated love as a conversation between imperfect people rather than a polished romantic ideal.
Readers’ Pick: Brand New Heartache – A New Alchemy
You picked Brand New Heartache – A New Alchemy as your favorite new release for the week of July 24, 2026.
Now & Then: John R. Miller’s The Great Unknowing and the reach of The Poet Game
John R. Miller’s The Great Unknowing expands his country-rooted songwriting without leaving its working-class concerns behind. The album moves between acoustic character studies, honky-tonk arrangements, and louder electric passages, but Miller’s focus stays on people dealing with disappointment, economic pressure, and their own bad habits. Greg Brown’s 1994 album The Poet Game offers a useful earlier model. Brown also built songs from ordinary lives and local details, then allowed broader social concerns to emerge without turning the writing into commentary first and music second.
Readers’ Pick: John R. Miller – The Great Unknowing
You picked John R. Miller – The Great Unknowing as your favorite new release for the week of July 10, 2026.
Now & Then: The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues and the reach of Berry Is on Top
The Rolling Stones have spent their career making their influences easy to hear, and Chuck Berry remains one of the clearest. Foreign Tongues connects through its guitar-driven arrangements, Jagger’s character-based singing, and the band’s preference for direct, rhythm-first rock and roll. Chuck Berry’s 1959 album Berry Is on Top offers a useful point of comparison because it contains several songs and techniques that helped shape the Stones from their earliest years.
Readers’ Pick: The Rolling Stones – Foreign Tongues
You picked The Rolling Stones – Foreign Tongues Price – Days Of Unrest as your favorite new release for the week of July 10, 2026.
Now & Then: Margo Price’s Days Of Unrest and the reach of Van Lear Rose
Margo Price has never treated country music as neutral ground, and Days Of Unrest removes any remaining doubt. Released as a July 4 weekend protest mixtape, it puts her in conversation with the folk-protest tradition while keeping one boot in country music. The “Then” album is Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose, a 2004 record that made plainspoken country songwriting feel newly urgent.