Roses

Rod Stewart made a ballyhooed returned to songwriting in 2013 when he released Time, a collection of songs inspired by his 2012 memoir Rod: The Autobiography. Stewart's reinvigorated muse wasn't a fleeting thing. Blood Red Roses is the second sequel to Time (the fine Another Country appeared in 2015) and, like its progenitor, it's billed as a "personal" project. "Personal" is usually code for introspection, but that's an adjective that simply doesn't describe Blood Red Roses, even if it is undeniably a record that's personal, reflecting precisely where Rod Stewart is in 2018, right down to how he dedicates a song to a city he's worked in for several years…

On her second full-length record, Head of Roses, Jenn Wasner follows a winding thread of intuition into the unknown and into healing, led by gut feelings and the near-spiritual experience of visceral songwriting.