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EXPLODING STAR

Heather Maloney’s new album, Exploding Star was never intended to be released. Written after the death of her father, the songs were the most vulnerable body of work she had ever created- meant and written only for her. The idea of releasing an album went against her instincts to keep this art close. Luckily for us, her family convinced her otherwise. Maloney was able to track for 2 days in her childhood home -– recording songs, backing vocals, the crickets in the yard and even percussion played directly on the walls and floors of the house itself. Maloney also played her father’s guitar and a keyboard that she had since she was a child. The result is raw and exquisitely personal, a collection of twelve songs urgently written at the time to help ease the “greatest heartbreak” of Maloney’s life but are thankfully and transcendentally now ours as well.

RACHEL BAIMAN

A SIDES/B SIDES

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Featuring inspired collaborations with Pony Bradshaw, Caroline Spence, Nicholas Jamerson, Kaia Kater, Andrea Von Kampen, and Sam Burchfield. Baiman reflects,“The idea was to write and record two songs, a digital A Side and B Side, to create a kind of “short story” musical offering. The process of exploring what each collaboration holds in terms of songwriting and performance possibility has been endlessly inspiring,” For this series, Baiman recorded in Nashville with producer Clare Reynolds ("Lollies"), which she says is “another kind of collaboration in which I found a lot of musical growth.”

EILEN JEWELL

BUTCHER HOLLER: A TRIBUTE TO LORETTA LYNN

For the first time, Butcher Holler is now available on deluxe vinyl, remastered and expanded with three brand new tracks and artwork.

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Butcher Holler is named for the little Kentucky town where Loretta Lynn was raised. On the tribute album of the same name, acclaimed singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell pays homage to Lynn’s humble roots and timeless, hard-hitting writing and performance style. For the first time, Butcher Holler is now available on vinyl, remastered and expanded with three brand new tracks. Jewell writes, “And so, a toast: to the woman with more banned songs than anyone can count; to that voice that reaches the very grain of the theater walls around her; to our national treasure. Gratitude is not enough, so I sing these songs for any who will listen.” The Boston Globe praised, “There's an irresistible snap to these songs- they're tight, deliciously twangy and rendered without orchestrated frills... [a] deft tribute."

TWISTED PINE

LOVE YOUR MIND

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On October 18th, Twisted Pine releases its joyous third LP, Love Your Mind, on Signature Sounds. The title represents the quartet landing after several years of touring, serious introspection, bouts of self-doubt, glorious bursts of creativity, and many after-hour festival jam sessions that had them pickin’ til dawn.

What started as a (semi-)traditional bluegrass band in the trenches of the storied Massachusetts’ Americana scene a decade ago has bloomed into an ensemble gleefully ready to race down any artistic detour. They can still pick with the best of them. But even the expansive “progressive bluegrass” label doesn’t come close to capturing the scope of Love Your Mind. The LP is full of buoyant pop and delicate folk, hootenanny twang and old-school r&b grooves, plus plenty of thoughtful, intense, and playful lyrics.

Co-produced by the band and longtime-collaborator Dan Cardinal at his studio Dimension Sound in Boston, the album is the sound of Twisted Pine now — experimental production, fearless songwriting featuring input from each member, finely-crafted collaborative arrangements, playing that is sometimes virtuosic, always visceral. The sound of a band that demands you Love Your Mind.

Twisted Pine is Kathleen Parks on fiddle and lead vocals, Dan Bui on mandolin, Chris Sartori on bass, and Anh Phung on flute. Everybody sings.

AJ LEE & BLUE SUMMIT

CITY OF GLASS

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AJ Lee & Blue Summit are an award-winning, energetic, and technically jaw-dropping bluegrass band quickly rising on the national roots music scene. Based in Santa Cruz, California, the group met as teenagers, picking together as kids at local bluegrass festivals until one day, they decided they would be a band. Their Signature Sounds debut, City of Glass is a spellbinding collection of original songs and covers that’s just as much country soul and gritty, bluesy Americana as it is rock club and festival-ready string band fare, all framed through a California folk lens. City of Glass not only focuses on AJ Lee’s songwriting and once in a generation voice, but also features the Bakersfield sound of guitarist and second lead vocalist Scott Gates on three tracks along with the guitar wizardry and indie rock influence of Sullivan Tuttle, the younger brother of Bluegrass superstar Molly Tuttle.

WILLI CARLISLE

TALES FROM CRITTERLAND

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Recorded live on Nov. 24, 2023 at The Shea Theater in Turners Falls, MA

"I adore live shows, so we recorded some songs. 2 unreleased folksongs ("Penny Evans" and "Hi Tone Dance") and 2 hard hitters ("The Arrangements" and "Critterland") we also recorded the STORIES behind them plus a ROWDY FUN CROWD in Turners Falls, MA." - Willi Carlisle

CHRIS SMITHER

ALL ABOUT THE BONES

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The sound and imagery of Chris Smither’s 20th album is as elemental as the inky black shadows cast by a shockingly bright moon. The listener is welcomed into some gothic mansion on an imaginary New Orleans street, and there in the lamplit parlor confronts Smither’s inimitable propulsive guitar and rumbling baritone, joined seamlessly to producer David Goodrich’s carpetbag of instruments, Zak Trojano’s rock-steady drumming, BettySoo’s diaphanous harmony vocals, and the mournful flood of Jazz legend Chris Cheek’s saxophone. Smither deemed “One of the absolute best singer-songwriters in the world” (Associated Press) is an American original whose genius is both in his effortless, distinctive, rippling guitar and in his reimagining of the acoustic blues as a vehicle for rich, philosophically complex lyrics. The light given off from the music and writing on All About The Bones casts our own lives into a sublime and welcome clarity.

WILLI CARLISLE

CRITTERLAND

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For folk singer Willi Carlisle, singing is healing. And by singing together, he believes we can begin to reckon with the inevitability of human suffering and grow in love. On his latest album, Critterland, Carlisle invites audiences to join him: “If we allow ourselves to sing together, there's a release of sadness, maybe even a communal one. And so for me personally, singing, like the literal act of thinking through suffering, is really freeing,” he says.

Rooted in the eclectic and collective world of his live shows, Carlisle’s third album and debut for Signature Sounds, Critterland takes up where his sophomore album, Peculiar, Missouri left off, transforming Peculiar’s big tent into a Critterland menagerie and letting loose the weirdos he gathered together. The album is a wild romp through the backwaters of his mind and America, lingering in the odd corners of human nature to visit obscure oddballs, dark secrets and complicated truths about the beauty and pain of life and love.

Produced by the GRAMMY Award-nominated Darrell Scott and to be released Jan. 26, 2024 by Signature Sounds, Critterland considers where we come from and where we are going. On the album, he takes on human suffering through stories about forbidden love, loss, generational trauma, addiction, and suicide, believing that by processing the traits and trauma we inherit, he can reach a deeper understanding of what it means to succeed and to exist.

LAKE STREET DIVE

Bad Self Portraits Deluxe 10th Anniversary Limited-Edition LP (red or blue vinyl)

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BLUE VINYL

RED VINYL

To celebrate the ten-year anniversary of their acclaimed breakthrough album, Bad Self Portraits, Signature Sounds is re-releasing a deluxe vinyl version. The limited-edition album is fully re-mastered with alternative art work and features 2 bonus tracks: “Wedding Band” and “What I’m Doing Here.”

When Bad Self Portraits was released in 2014 Rolling Stone deemed Lake Street Dive “The year’s best new band” and the album debuted at #18 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. Their television performances have included The Late Show With David Letterman, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and the Today Show. Over the years, they’ve captivated massive audiences at such esteemed festivals as Newport Folk Festival, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and Toronto Jazz Festival, in addition to headlining tours all across the globe and sharing stages with acts like Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow.

TAYLOR ASHTON

STRANGER TO THE FEELING

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Recorded over the course of a 4,000-mile cross-country roadtrip, Taylor Ashton’s new album is a sonic odyssey through the heart of America, one that works its way geographically from coast to coast as it meditates on the meaning of closeness and connection.

The performances are warm and inviting, anchored by Ashton’s deft guitar and banjo work and rich, easygoing melodicism, and the recordings—helmed by producer Jacob Blumberg and captured with a broad range of collaborators including Courtney Hartman, Big Thief’s Buck Meek, Lake Street Dive’s Rachael Price, Vulfpeck’s Theo Katzman, and Late Show bandleader Louis Cato—are alternately sparse and lush.

From a blanket in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to a spiritual vortex in Sedona, AZ, the settings are inextricable from the songs, and the result is a moving collection that evokes both the gentle virtuosity of Nick Drake and the buoyant wit of Paul Simon.

BRENNEN LEIGH

AIN’T THROUGH HONKY TONKIN’ YET

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Awash in full-throttle fiddle, weeping steel guitar, a sprinkling of heavenly backing vocals, and anchored by her warm, expressive vocals, Brennen Leigh’s latest album is an emotion-packed revelation. Rooted in vintage country, Ain’t Through Honky Tonkin’ Yet is an unapologetically beer- and tear-soaked homage to an era when hard-country weepers burst forth from AM transistor radios. “I’m in love with this idea of the real Nashville, " says Leigh. “The idyllic golden age, which, to me, is around 1967, 1968, because of the alchemy, the explosion that occurred, with the best country music songwriters ever, the best singers in country music.” The album’s country roots run deep, with guests like Marty Stuart and Rodney Crowell and a lineup of top-flight musicians, yet each track soars with abandon. With thoughtful, incisive lyrics and vibrant melodies at the forefront, Leigh has successfully created a modern gem, while honoring country music’s enduring golden era.

EILEN JEWELL

GET BEHIND THE WHEEL

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Eilen Jewell’s new album Get Behind The Wheel is heavy without sounding heavy, filled with the joy and freedom Jewell found in taking back the reins of her life after a season of hardships that found her on the verge of quitting music altogether. The resulting album—forged by a woman who is still writing songs, working, performing and co-parenting with her ex-husband and bandmate, and is newly engaged—is some of the finest, most arresting, and emotionally nuanced writing of Jewell’s career so far.

Get Behind The Wheel pushes Jewell’s trademark blend of vintage roots-noir into more psychedelic territory, with spacious, cinematic arrangements complementing her revelatory explorations of grief, loss, resilience, and redemption—all with the help of co-producer and multi-instrumental wizard Will Kimbrough (Todd Snider, Hayes Carll, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell).

RACHEL BAIMAN

COMMON NATION OF SORROW

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On Common Nation of Sorrow. Baiman explores American capitalism and the devastation it manifests, while finding hope in these stories as a mechanism for activism. Baiman produced and recorded the album in her hometown of Nashville. “In some ways, this is a homecoming project for me”, she says. “I wanted to explore these songs based on who and where I am, with the people who have raised me musically.” The album was recorded with GRAMMY winner Sean Sullivan and mixed by famed engineer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, First Aid Kit). Baiman has garnered a reputation for her specific brand of political and personal lyricism, which Vice’s Noisey described as ‘Flipping off authority one note at a time”. This album is no exception, with Baiman pushing to new heights and delivering a heartbreaking, albeit beautiful, assessment of her country.

TAYLOR ASHTON

PIZZA TICKETS (EP)

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“I’ve loved these songs for as long as I can remember,” Taylor Ashton reflects. “Each one has taught me something about love, being alive, and co-existing with other humans on this crazy planet.”

When Ashton first moved to New York City several years ago from Canada, it was on the heels of a breakup and the end of his band Fish & Bird. He took up busking in subway tunnels to get by, armed with his banjo and a few dozen covers. “At the end of a night, I’d come home with a banjo case full of $1 bills,” Ashton writes. “I affectionately called these “Pizza Tickets” based on how often I spent them at one of New York’s many dollar slice joints.”

Hence the name of his striking new E.P. of covers, Pizza Tickets. Ashton has chosen seven beloved songs by Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Tom Waits, Alanis Morrisette and others, performed on his signature clawhammer banjo with gorgeously minimal folk-pop flourishes. Pizza Tickets is a prelude to a full-length album of originals that will be released in August of this year.

ALI McGUIRK

TIL IT’S GONE

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On her Signature Sounds debut Til It’s Gone, Ali McGuirk delivers a sublime set of songs that pairs her trademark soul sound with rootsy turns and raw rock ‘n’ roll detours. McGuirk co-produced Til It’s Gone with Jonah Tolchin (a star singer-songwriter in his own right) and a set of session legends: Little Feat guitarist/mandolinist Fred Tackett, organist Larry Goldings (James Taylor, Norah Jones), singer Valerie Pinkston (Ray Charles, Luther Vandross), percussionist Lenny Castro (Stevie Nicks, Stevie Wonder). They provided the astounding chops, but the true magic of the album comes from McGuirk’s singular voice as both singer and songwriter. The nine tracks run from intimate introspection to wider meditations on oppression and justice, from tough r&b and tender soul to big rock guitar and twangy folk. And McGuirk's voice – bold, buttery, spellbinding – carries each song to the next til they’re gone.