Twangville

A music blog featuring Alt-Country, Americana, Indie, Rock, Folk & Blues. Est. 2005.

Now & Then: Margo Price’s Days Of Unrest and the reach of Van Lear Rose

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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. 

Mayer’s Picks – The Best of 2026 (So Far), the Songs

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Don’t Let Go, Fantastic Cat (from the Missing Piece Records release Cat Out of Hell) A scream-along-at-the-top-of-your-lungs anthem about holding on to your dreams. Nothing you can buy can save what you soldSo hold on tight to the light in your soulDon’t look down, baby don’t let… Don’t let go Suffer, Boy Golden (from the […]

Mayer’s Picks – the Best of 2026 (So Far), the Albums

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Cat Out of Hell by Fantastic Cat Fantastic Cat’s third album is another classic, nothing but pure pop perfection. Four songwriters with distinct styles blend here in a way that shouldn’t work as well as it does — sharp and spirited in both lyric and melody. And credit where it’s due: any album title that […]

Tift Merritt – Sugar

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After the birth of her daughter in 2016 and her last full length, Stitch of the World, in 2017, Tift Merritt moved music to the backburner. She serves as a Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University exploring the creative process. She also hosted a radio show called The Spark. Fans of Tift rejoiced last year with demos […]

Now & Then: American Aquarium’s New Ways to Lose and the reach of Tennessee

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American Aquarium’s New Ways to Lose puts BJ Barham back in familiar territory, but with a wider lens. The songs still come from bars, back roads, family memory, and bad decisions, yet the focus has shifted from private wreckage to the social pressures around it. For a useful older reference point, Lucero’s Tennessee makes sense. Released in 2002, it helped define a Southern alt-country lane where punk urgency, country phrasing, and bar-band durability could sit in the same set without apology. 

Now & Then: Swamp Dogg’s Swamp Dogg Contemplates The Afterlife and the reach of Solomon Burke’s Don’t Give Up on Me

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Swamp Dogg’s Swamp Dogg Contemplates The Afterlife belongs in the long line of soul records where age sharpens the writing instead of softening it. The album looks at mortality, memory, belief, and unfinished business with the plain speech that has always made Swamp Dogg hard to categorize. A useful earlier reference is Solomon Burke’s 2002 album Don’t Give Up on Me, a late-career soul record that gave an older singer room to use experience as the central instrument.

The Palomino Club

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If the Ryman is the mother church of country music, North Hollywood’s Palomino was its tent revival/medicine show cousin–a lot more raucous, less bound to tradition, but with no less passion about its spiritual foundation. I had the good fortune last week to attend a private screening of the soon-to-be-released documentary, simply called The Palomino, […]

American Aquarium – New Ways to Lose

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With their 11th studio album New Ways to Lose, American Aquarium and front man BJ Barham continue to prove why they remain one of the most vital voices in Americana and roots rock. Produced once again by Shooter Jennings and tracked live over a 10-day session in Los Angeles, the record captures the band at […]

Now & Then: The Red Clay Strays’ Grateful and the reach of The Del Fuegos’ Boston, Mass.

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The Red Clay Strays’ Grateful and The Del Fuegos’ Boston, Mass. are both band records in the practical sense. The appeal starts with a singer, but it depends on the group around him: guitars that answer instead of crowd, rhythm sections that keep the songs moving, and arrangements that sound built from stage time. Grateful was released in 2026 and produced by Dave Cobb, while Boston, Mass. was The Del Fuegos’ second album, released in 1985 on Slash Records.