The new October 2025 issue of Uncut comes with a free CD – Volume 7 of our much-loved Sounds Of The New West series.
The new October 2025 issue of Uncut comes with a free CD – Volume 7 of our much-loved Sounds Of The New West series.
The compilation includes 15 of our favourite new tracks from the world of Americana, country, folk and roots rock, with an emphasis this time on the stranger, eerier side of the continent.
There’s ragged, stumbling rock from the likes of Friendship, Case Oats, Wednesday and Florry, experimental Appalachian folk from Sally Anne Morgan and Joseph Decosimo, dour balladry from Jeffrey Martin and Eve Adams, and even ambient Americana from Shrunken Elvis.
See below for the full tracklisting and more…
1 Friendship
Betty Ford
We start our seventh volume of Sounds Of The New West with this fine cut from the Philadelphia group’s fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up. Dan Wriggins weaves a mini-movie, inspired by watching a documentary on the life of the former First Lady, while behind him the group are laidback and ramshackle in all the right ways.
2 Case Oats
Bitter Root Lake
The Chicago duo of Casey Walker and Spencer Tweedy have, with Last Missouri Exit, made one of the strongest debut albums of 2025 so far. Here’s a highlight from it, a steady alt.country charmer that recalls Bright Eyes at their best, especially in Walker’s hallucinatory lyrics.
3 Eve Adams
Death Valley Forever
This is the closing track of Adams’ new album American Dust, inspired by the lonesome, isolated desert landscape in the American Southwest region she calls home. Over a waltzing rhythm, piano and layered backing vocals, a reverb-soaked harmonica calls to mind the mirages of California’s Death Valley.
4 Horsebath
Hard To Love
Best not let the name put you off, for these Canadian cowboys are well worth corralling. On their debut album Another Farewell they marshall honky-tonk barroom piano, pedal steel and twanging Telecasters to create something halfway between the Buckaroos and the Stones.
5 Souled American
Sorry State
These underground legends of alternative Americana are due back with a new and long-awaited album, Sanctions, at some point in the future, and this track will be on it. “Sorry State” may not be as translucent and desperately drifting as the time-stretching songs on 1996’s Notes Campfire, but it still staggers enchantingly under Chris Grigoroff’s raw vocals.
6 Eli Winter
Black Iris On A Burning Quilt
This Houston-born, Chicago-based guitarist released a fine record of expansive instrumental guitar, A Trick Of The Light, earlier this year. Closing it is this near-eight-minute epic, which moves from fingerpicked prettiness to a distorted meltdown and finally a beatific spiritual jazz coda.
7 Slow Motion Cowboys
Invisible Stars
New Orleans’ Slow Motion Cowboys unveiled their stunning Wolf Of Saint Elmo in April, and here’s the opening track, a wonderfully melancholic gem that recalls prime Lambchop or Neil Young at his most country. Margo Cilker’s a fan, and has covered this song live.
8 Anna Tivel
Airplane To Nowhere
Born in Washington State, Tivel moved to Portland, Oregon at 18 and has swiftly built up a strong back catalogue over the last decade or so. Her new album Animal Poem is a quiet marvel, mixing folk, country and jazz, the result resembling a more rustic Big Thief.
9 Wednesday
Pick Up That Knife
Bleeds is the sixth album from the Asheville group – led by Karly Hartzman and featuring MJ Lenderman – and perhaps their best so far. They’re rooted in the humid drawl of Americana if filtered through the lens of Pavement’s “Father To A Sister Of Thought”, and occasionally obliterated by waves of hardcore distortion.
10 Shrunken Elvis
An Old Outlet
On their self-titled debut album, Spencer Cullum, Rich Ruth and Sean Thompson – all solo artists in their own right – come together to produce some thrilling ambient Americana. At times it’s as if Harmonia had recorded by the Mississippi rather than the Weser, with Cullum’s pedal steel drifting weightlessly above the synths, drum machines and fluid lead guitar lines.
11 Julianna Riolino
Seed
This Toronto singer-songwriter is gearing up to release her second album, Echo In The Dust, in late October; her music is rooted in Americana, sure, but she cuts it with ragged garage on the likes of “On A Bluebird’s Wing” and, here, swinging R&B balladry with a magnificently raw vocal.
12 Florry
Big Something
Coming together in Philadelphia and then exploding across the country, the seven-piece Florry still managed to team up to record this tattered, torn and tremendous third LP. Over acoustic guitars, drums and fiddle, the group tap into something strange and visceral, best exemplified by Francie Medosch’s fevered yowls.
13 Sally Anne Morgan
Eye Is The First
There can be something deeply weird about folk music, and Sally Anne Morgan knows that better than most. On her latest record, Second Circle The Horizon, she carries on the Appalachian folk tradition with piercing electric guitar picking, field recordings, fiddle and all manner of unique instruments – the result is spellbinding and often eerie.
14 Jeffrey Martin
Edge Of Lost
2023’s Thank God We Left The Garden was a striking return from the Portland-based musician; here’s a recent, and gorgeous, one-off single that continues the stark, confessional vibes. When he sings about feeling “so far down”, there’s no option but to believe him completely.
15 Joseph Decosimo
Glory In The Meetinghouse
North Carolina’s Decosimo is an expert in ‘old-time music’, and has lent his instrumental talents to recordings by Hiss Golden Messenger, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Wye Oak and more. Fiery Gizzard is the latest missive from his explorations; this piece mixes a fiddle jig with foreboding drones and rattling percussion, the Appalachian undergrowth suddenly feeling very close.
