‘So Much for Goodbyes’ by Billy Strings
★★★
Consider the latest from Billy Strings “an instant addition to the canon of great Americana albums born from personal upheaval,” said Eric Renner Brown in Billboard. The virtuosic bluegrass guitarist, whose “lightning-quick” picking and psychedelic improvisations have won him a devoted following, has thus far been underrated as a songwriter. “But expect that to change with his emotional fifth album,” a record born of heartbreak following the 2025 overdose death of his mother. While “Burn the Other End,” the first single, “bottles the fire and brimstone of Strings’ live shows,” the album’s true standout, the somber “Still I Crash,” is “as intimate a song as Strings has ever recorded.” Arriving halfway in, that tune “effectively punches the listener in the stomach” and “casts a long shadow over the remaining tracks,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Up until then, the 33-year-old three-time Grammy winner has mixed in a Springsteen-like piece of heartland rock and a couple songs “so rooted in tradition” they could be 80 years old. When a sorrowful waltz ends things, you’ll be buoyed by one thought: “how rich and powerful the album you’ve just heard is.”
‘I Must Be Dreaming’ by Alabama Shakes
★★★
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When Alabama Shakes scored a No. 1 album with 2015’s Sound & Color, “it seemed like the start of something big,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. Instead, the “soulful roots-rock outfit” stopped touring in 2017, chief songwriter Brittany Howard dove into solo projects, and we’ve all waited 11 years for a follow-up to the band’s Grammy-winning sophomore effort. Finally, though, Howard has reunited with guitarist Heath Fogg and bassist Zac Cockrell, delivering a record that “represents an evolution of the band’s sound while clarifying why it stood out from the retro-rock horde in the first place,” starting with Howard’s remarkable voice. I Must Be Dreaming “is, among other things, a grown-up record,” said Jonathan Bernstein in Rolling Stone. “There are songs about wistful regret, songs about the state of the country, songs about, well, gardens.” Highlights include the piano-driven shuffle “Waist Deep” and the genre-blending centerpiece, “I Feel Hope Coming.” Howard “hasn’t sounded this at home in years,” proof that her old band “remains one of the most effective ways of communicating the rock-soul-funk-pop she hears inside her head.”
