"jokes on you"
guccihighwaters
Epitaph Records
Singer/producer guccihighwaters is preparing for the release of his full-length sophomore album, "jokes on you," out Jan. 22. Despite his recent success, which has him poised for pop stardom, Morgan Murphy, who creates under the moniker guccihighwaters, hasn't always embraced attention or popularity. In fact he was and often still is an introverted and sensitive soul. However, when he uncovered the ability to namelessly create on internet, a feeling of freedom came over him and he found a sense of belonging, admitting that "it was like a secret party that I just discovered."
This breakthrough was monumental to the creation and success of guccihighwaters. As Murphy made "friends" at that "party," he used his tenacious ebb and flow storytelling style, his unwavering passion for perfection and a blue-collar work ethic -- all of which can be attributed to his emigration from Limerick, Ireland to Long Beach, N.Y. at age 15 -- to cultivate and shape an eager and vibrant fanbase of nearly 1 million monthly listeners and over 168 million streams on Spotify who all subscribe to his community approach to emotional connection.
"Fall Like Rain"
Justin Moses
Mountain Fever Records
For the last three-quarters of a century, in the world of bluegrass music, one thing has always been certain: the cream rises to the top. And it didn't take long for International Bluegrass Music Association Award-winner Justin Moses to rise to his now prestigious status as one of the finest multi-instrumentalists in acoustic music. On Jan. 22, Moses's pickin' prowess and songwriting skills will be on full display with his release of "Fall Like Rain," his new self-produced full-length album. Featuring Moses on vocals and a slew of stringed instruments -- from flat-top six-string and Weissenborn guitar to mandolin and banjo -- "Fall Like Rain" not only sheds light on his many talents, but on the skill and perseverance it takes to piece them all together to create the final product.
Prior to the album's release, critics doted over a number of early singles and they've all performed well on Bluegrass Today and Roots Music radio charts with the album's title track reaching No. 1. The Bluegrass Situation called "Taxland" -- which features Moses's wife of three years and acoustic superstar in her own right, Sierra Hull -- "a melody that is all at once careening wildly towards its end and impossibly, impeccably clean."
"Honeychurch"
Widowspeak
Captured Tracks
Fresh off the release of their critically-acclaimed fifth album, "Plum," Widowspeak welcome the new year with "Honeychurch," a brand new digital EP out Jan. 22. Along with the announcement of the new release, the duo shared a rich, expansive version of Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet." It's no secret that Widowspeak's covers are unmatched. With Molly Hamilton's serenely sweet vocals and Robert Earl Thomas' atmospheric guitar, they've transformed Neil Young's "Harvest Moon," Third Eye Blind's "How's It Going Be," Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" and now "Romeo and Juliet" into signature Widowspeak ballads.
Like the 17th-century tile on its cover, "Honeychurch" is a repurposed artifact. Its title, a nod to E.M. Forster's "A Room With A View," was originally a working title for "Plum" -- an album noted and praised by Pitchfork for its "glowing synths and lyrics about labor and death" and Stereogum for the "gentle, beautiful and light as air sounds despite the weight of emotion it carries." Recorded at their apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y. and mixed and mastered by Jamie Harley (The Jesus and Mary Chain, Mogwai), Widowspeak's new collection delivers homespun intimations with polished precision. The questions posed on "Plum" still reverberate, and "Honeychurch" leaves space for us to hear them better.
"In Ferneaux"
Blanck Mass
Sacred Bones
Blanck Mass -- the solo electronic project of British musician Benjamin John Power -- announces his new album, "In Ferneaux," out Feb. 26. It's the follow-up to 2019's "Animated Violence Mild," which "channels the horrors of the surveillance state and the creeping dread of everyday life into the most aggressive music of [Power's] career" (Pitchfork). In turn, "In Ferneaux" explores pain in motion, building audio-spatial chambers of experience and memory.
Using an archive of field recordings from a decade of global travels, isolation gave Blanck Mass an opportunity to make connections in a moment when being together is impossible. The record is divided into two long-form journeys that gather the memories of being with now-distant others through the composition of a nostalgic travelogue. The journeys are haunted with the vestiges of voices, places and sensations. These scenes alternate with the building up and releasing of great aural tension, intensities that emerge from the trauma of a personal grieving process which has perhaps embraced its rage moment.