Seven Electricana Songs You Oughta Know
Seven Electricana Songs You Oughta Know
by Jason Jones
April 2024
The Americana genre is up for grabs. The best of what’s out there is less and less a guy with a guitar strumming on a stool. Instead, technologies usually in keeping with electronic music, such as synthesizers, layered vocals, remixes, and instrument-altering pedals, are now commonplace, allowing an eccentric shelf of artists to explore the genre in new ways. Here’s seven examples ranging from a countrified Black Lips song that adds a touch of digital ambience to Krohme’s remix of King Dude covering Merle Travis to Brittany Howard taking us on a full scale electro-roots expedition.
1. Black Lips - "Stolen Valor"
There’s really somethin’ to how you put “nothin’” in a country song. This one comes with just a touch of tasteful digital layering for atmospherics near the outro. There’s more to this song than at first there may appear.
Did you know? Black Lips have been compared to GG Allin for their on stage antics.
2. Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy, featuring Matt Sweeney - "OD'd in Denver" (Hank Williams Jr.)
Drag City Records has long been a purveyor of the shady sides of Americana. Here’s an unexpected version of a laid bare Bocephus ballad. Wavering specters of electricity creak in the floorboards of this track.
Did you know? Bonnie "Prince" Billy (Will Oldham), David Berman (Silver Jews), and Stephen Malkmus (Pavement) published poems in the same issue of Open City in the 1990s.
3. Caroline Spence & Matt Berninger - "I Know You Know Me"
Stark vocals against a placid soundscape wider than you realize. A svelte take on The National’s classic paradigm. A plangent contemplation, exquisitely bittersweet.
Did you know? Carolina Spence is from Charlottesville, Virginia and her album True North is a tribute to poet Mary Oliver, according to her website.
4. Lindsay Lou - "Love Calls"
A surging, morpheus piece of music, self-defined, a provocative mosaic that leaves us in the lurch, feeling jinxed or speculative. Digital antics abound. Lindsay Lou deploys an extended phone call sample, interpolated across the structured contours of the song, giving the players space to fold in slathers of playful, trippy tones.
Did you know? PJ George (Old Crow Medicine Show) from Salem, Virginia is featured on multiple instruments across Lindsay Lou's Queen of Time.
5. King Dude & Krohme, featuring Doug Wimbish and Daniel Fleming - "16 Tons" (Merle Travis)
Like Massive Attack playing the scrip miner blues. Another farfetched dynamo built for freshness by Krohme. It’s King Dude feelin’ mean on a spooked mountain road, bringing a classic to a new crowd.
Did you know? Krohme runs a non-profit called Calm Bomb Collective to benefit independent artists and charitable organizations such as Punks for Autism.
6. Brittany Howard - "Every Color in Blue"
It should be no secret now that I’ve taken a nonlinear look at the genre, but if you sit back and listen, Brittany Howard is giving us roots music, Americana if you will. Here’s a portal into another dimension. Channeling Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Camille Yarbrough, as if Sycorax took a speaking part at last, the power of Brittany Howard’s mystic sorcery is immense, global, potent.
Did you know? According to nytimes.com, Brittany Howard was watching Tiger King and listening to Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life while making her latest album What Now.
7. The Beak Trio - "Refurbished Nail Farm"
A cosmic odyssey into the hinterlands of electric banjo. It’s in the same sphere as Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, but more spartan, more punk rock, way weirder, a zooey menagerie of supersonic funk n’ twang. A rhythm section with bags of tricks.
Did you know? The Beak Trio is comprised of members from New York, New York and Richmond, Virginia. <>