For a lack of better descriptor, folk and country music as we know it today is not a sound that is containable nor is it linear. It’s wonderfully odd and enriched by the individual journeys of its artists. 2022 featured some of the best adventures within those scenes which continue pushing the sound of twang and thistle far beyond the grass and into a new vision of the world where sights familiar and cosmic melt on the same dusty plane…

Alex G – God Save the Animals [Domino Recording Co.]

God Save the Animals, the latest effort from the prolific Philly indie shape-shifter, further approaches straighter lines and accessibility in the Alex Giannascoli songwriting method, especially in regards to brambling Americana and backwoods folky patchwork amid the occasional experimental hip thrust or grungy distortion. Yet, the listen is no less obtuse in its surrounding scenery with words bordering the fantastical even if mining deeper into their meaning reveals a faithful reflection for the human condition.

Aldous Harding – Warm Chris [4AD]

Warm Chris isn’t a flashy listen and is built around a folk implosion, but in its own idiosyncratic way, Aldous Harding has interpretive her instruments’ traditionalism into angles more unique than might be suggested. The collection of songs from the New Zealand songwriter’s latest full-length are inverted tales of emotional restlessness and descript observations of the relational variety, as Harding’s emphasis on atypical vocal deliveries and more tedious, distorted designs of piano, brass, and a soft psychedelia of guitar pop make it so that the interpretation of them is in the ear of its beholder, always reshaping itself in any lapse of time with each listen.

Angel Olsen – Big Time [Jagjaguwar]

Informed as well by her own journey as an artist, Angel Olsen here leans heavily into a warm acoustic bends, just enough twang, an orchestral debonair, and her sky-wide croon to consider Big Time a true modern queer country classic in which she loses and loves before arriving at a point better knowing herself. While Olsen can always be counted on to take the dusty road less traveled, Big Time is a reminder that her map is never without careful compass.

Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You [4AD]

What’s astounding about Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is how cohesive it is in its stylistic inconsistencies despite being recorded across a span of five months in four separate geographies with sessions recorded in upstate New York, Topanga Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, and Tucson, Arizona. In any of these environment is the national treasure of Adrianne Lenker, and how her voice and lyricism are malleable in any of them. Whether casting a long country gaze, channeling magnetic fields, or even tempting the hot glow of modern R&B in their freak folk, she and the band don’t seem to hold any doubts as to what music will be a look for them.

Gold Dust – The Late Great Gold Dust [Centripetal Force Records]

In his short time on this Earth thus far, Stephen Pierce has already become a cornerstone fixture within the Western Massachusetts independent music scene, having been a key driving force behind post-hardcore bastions Ampere and decibel-decimating shoegazers Kindling, but with his psychedelic folk project Gold Dust, he has expanded its view by many miles across nature (both existentially and physically) with the band’s sophomore effort, The Late Great Gold Dust. Worshipping at the doom folk and psychedelic boom folk altars in a way that bridges his heavier work with lush, dream pastures flower-powered with massive drums in bloom behind it, it’s the sound of trekking onward even when life’s surroundings feel like they are closing in on you.

Jana Horn – Optimism [No Quarter]

There’s a sense to Optimism, the debut album from enigmatic songwriter Jana Horn, that its mysteries will continue to unravel themselves in the years to come. The Austin-based artist’s music carries with it a spiritual weight born from poignant personal occurrences and dogmatic observations in this strange world around us, yet when woven through Horn’s own supernatural myth-making – oft whispered, and constructed humbly in strum, brass, synth, and harmony – her stories transcend astral planes sitting somewhere between dusky terrains and the celestial sphere.

Sadurn – Radiator [Run for Cover Records]

Like a lot of music over the past year, Radiator, the debut full-length from Sadurdn, is a product of life making do with pandemic times all the while dealing with whatever else it throws in your way. At the forefront of today’s new class of emo country, frontperson and guitarist Genevieve DeGroot, guitarist Jon Cox, drummer Amelia Swain and Tabitha Ahnert are best suited for humble surroundings, with the group’s spare, dusky instrumentation complimenting Degroot’s inner monologues pouring through line and chorus. Throwing this one on is like curling up with a blanket and quiet corner, warmth surrounding you.

Tomberlin – i don’t know who needs to hear this… [Saddle Creek]

There’s a sense of freeness moving through Tomberlin’s lips on i don’t know who needs to hear this… despite her admissions of finding herself in purgatory with another on several instances. With her sophomore effort, the Brooklyn-by-way-of-the-Midwest artist expounds upon tiny details of introspection, but in designs all the more intricate, ensuring her wisdom in song reaches further out with its tender beacon as the album resounds through the high ceilings and alters since built by the church of Tomberlin through a host of instrumentation where At Weddings searched through spiritual vacancies.

Why Bonnie – 90 In November [Keeled Scaled]

Born out of a dreamy patchwork of indie-pop that began to take form on their 2018 EP, In Water, and evolved across two additional EPs thereafter, Why Bonnie have found the right temperature for their art to live in since trekking across Austin to Brooklyn to put it all into frame. It turns out that lucidity makes earnest everything Blair Howerton takes from the rearview and puts into the present, with she and the band creating a transfixing overlay of sublime indie rock, alternative country charm, a slight punk fever, and the occasional radio wave signal bending through hazed production.

Wild Pink – ILYSM [Royal Mountain Records]

Cancer is the big scare, and it rattles Wild Pink right down to the bone in a beautiful reflection of that morbid journey from both sides in the band’s phenomenal comfort of their fourth full-length, ILYSM. John Ross alongside the rest of the Brooklyn-based four-piece are joined here by the likes of J Mascis and Julien Baker in a sound that natures itself away from the anthemic panoramic of their predecessors in favor of leaner, deeper, yet moon-sized ruminations on life, love, and time, ultimately arriving on the reminder that every moment – no matter how small – is significant, as with their music.