Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Saskatchewan-born singer-songwriter Colter Wall learned the feeling well after spending so much time on the road. “Wherever I wander, wherever I stray/The rustle of the wheat fields starts calling my name,” he sings on “Plain to See Plainsman,” his rich baritone echoing the song’s strolling bassline. His sophomore album spins that homesickness into tribute. Produced by Nashville’s Dave Cobb, and featuring harmonica from Willie Nelson’s longtime collaborator Mickey Raphael and pedal steel guitar from Lloyd Green, Songs of the Plains situates the Canadian troubadour alongside Southern brethren like Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, and Chris Stapleton. As Wall tells it, Western isn’t a direction so much as a state of mind.
Home In This World: Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads is an interpretation of Guthrie’s landmark 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads. The album features an all-star cast, assembled by Randall Poster, that interpret the songs on the only non-compilation album of Guthrie’s career, including everyone from Grammy Award winners Lee Ann Womack and John Paul White to poet laureate Mark Lanegan and country and Americana star Lillie Mae, Shovels and Rope, mandolinist Chris Thile, Colter Wall, Watkins Family Hour, Waxahatchee, Lost Dog Street Band, The Felice Brothers, Secret Sisters, Swamp Dogg, and Parker Millsap.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, who both play in the Bad Seeds and Grinderman, score a lot of films together. Their latest endeavor is Hell or High Water, a David Mackenzie-directed film starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine. CBS Films will release the movie in theaters August 12, which is the same day the soundtrack comes out via Milan Records. It features several pieces of score from Cave and Ellis, plus songs by Waylon Jennings, Townes Van Zandt, Chris Stapleton, and others.