Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.
1. Tyler Childers — Snipe Hunter
Some albums welcome you with laidback ease, like a morning cup of coffee. Other records take that cup of coffee and toss the hot brew directly into your lap. The latest Tyler Childers LP, Snipe Hunter, is an example of the latter. The first song is a bracing class-conscious rocker called “Eatin’ Big Time,” in which the 34-year-old Kentucky native makes a sly reference to government assistance (EBT) while his band (named, coincidentally, The Food Stamps) slams hard into a chunky, organ-spiked groove. “Have you ever got to hold and blow a thousand fucking dollars?” Childers hollers, and you can sense his wide, gleeful grin beaming through the chaos.
2. Greg Freeman — Burnover
In 2022, this talented 27-year-old put out his debut, I Looked Out. The project began right before COVID, and the songs were written and recorded during the isolation of lockdown. As an obscure artist living amid a world-wide health crisis in a far-flung New England hippie college town — Burlington, home of Phish — he had zero professional ambitions for the album. And yet the music he made was big, anthemic, rangy, and wild, an echo of the gigs he wasn’t allowed to play for the time being. Singing in a strained, impassioned tenor, Freeman evoked Jason Molina at his most rocking, while his backing band put a loose-limbed indie-rock spin on his alt-country-leaning tunes. Now comes Burnover, which builds on the ramshackle, “live in the studio” feel of I Looked Out with a slightly more refined sensibility. Drawing inspiration from a variety of sources — the history of New England, Nancy Rexroth’s photography book IOWA, the 1978 Bob Dylan record Street-Legal — he’s once again written songs that dwell on American mythology and personal discovery in the form of twangy rock songs that threaten to fall apart at any minute.
3. Billy Strings at The Target Center in Minneapolis, August 9
I finally had the chance to see this jam-grass phenom in person this month, and he didn’t disappoint. I also came away impressed by his band, particularly Billy Failing on banjo and Jarrod Walker on mandolin. It’s extremely difficult to write about this kind of music without leaning on “chops,” “virtuosic,” and other adjectives that make it sound like you’re writing for Musician magazine in 1988. (Let the specificity of this reference indicate my love for reading back issues of Musician magazine from 1988.) But watching these guys shred for two-and-a-half hours is enjoyable in ways that are both musical and athletic. On extended workouts like “All Fall Down” and “Turmoil And Tinfoil,” they place their fluid instrumental lines in the overall mix with the grace and precision of the ’90s Chicago Bulls running the triangle offense. On the other hand, Billy Strings is just an exceptional down-home picker, which explained the sizable contingent of cowboy boots mixed with all the tie-dyed shirts. Jam bands often have insular audiences composed largely of fans who like other jam bands. But Billy Strings exists as much in the country lane as the jam one, an especially fortuitous skill given the dual explosions of both genres this decade. Along with Sturgill Simpson (who, like Strings, performed as an opener at the recent “Dead 60” concerts in San Francisco), he’s been able to triangulate a huge audience from the overlap of jam and country’s Venn diagram.
4. Water From Your Eyes — It’s A Beautiful Place
Half of this band, the singer-songwriter Nate Amos, wowed many critics in 2024 (including me) with his solo project This Is Lorelei, a canny indie-folk project that straightened the experimental impulses of his other outfit into appealing pop-rock shapes. (As I wrote in my year-end list column, “Water From Your Eyes is The Pod, and This Is Lorelei is White Pepper.) Water From Your Eyes actually has some White Pepper vibes on It’s A Beautiful Place, though the clearer hooks and bandmate Rachel Brown’s alluring croon haven’t completely obscured the baseline weirdness, thankfully. (On Indiecast, I called them a more tasteful 100 Gecs, which I meant as a compliment to both acts.)
5. Cass McCombs — Live Interior Oak
This Northern California native has been so consistently great for so long that another new great album (actually closer to double-album length) is easy to take for granted. McCombs belongs in that class of first-rate middle-aged singer-songwriters (along with Dan Bejar and Bill Callahan) that simply refuse to start sucking as they get older. He’s actually a little more obscure than those other guys, given his enigmatic, close-to-the-vest sensibility. But on Live Interior Oak, he opens up his music in ways that recall the sprawl of 2013’s Big Wheel And Others, one of his finest records. The new one is just about in that class, particularly when he lets loose his guitar on captivating tracks like “Lola Montez Danced The Spider Dance.”
6. Nourished By Time — The Passionate Ones
I loved the prior release that Marcus Brown released as Nourished By Time, the 2024 EP Catching Chickens, which played like the lost soundtrack to a 1980s Michael Mann crime thriller as filtered through a lo-fi VHS lens. Brown further expands on his mix of R&B, pop, and gritty rock on his new full-length The Passionate Ones, which balances politically minded lyrics about modern economic dystopia with atmospheric soundscapes that evoke rain-soaked streets set against a post-apocalyptic horizon.
7. Charley Crockett, Dollar A Day
Country music’s most prolific stylist. Crockett puts out albums at a Robert Pollard pace, and they tend to stick to the same traditionalist lane. On Dollar A Day, he sings about being a no-good gambler and how it’s mighty long road from El Paso to Denver and being an “All Around Cowboy.” This act might come across as tired or annoying if Crockett’s whiskey-coated croon wasn’t a genuine throwback or his songs weren’t so exquisitely played and produced. If you’re going to bang on about the glory of old country records, it helps to sound as good as those records.
8. Ryan Davis And The Roadhouse Band, Cambridge, UK, 8/24/25
I recently (sort of) joked on the app formerly known as Twitter that Ryan Davis And The Roadhouse Band should pivot to being a jam band. Several people immediately pointed out that Davis’ songs are already really long, and jamming them out might push them past the brink. Solid point, but I was trying to illustrate how good Davis’ backing band is, which is driven home by this recent live tape from Davis’ current tour. As good as the recent New Threats From The Soul is, their musicianship and playful experimentation really shines here.
