Music

Rowdy punk rock insolence to the right, a bottle in a bag; organic three-chords-and-the-truth frankness to the left—one eye in the rearview mirror and one eye on the rough road ahead. Sidelong is a record that will make you sit up and take notice. This is a new voice for a new country.

At its core, Heart-Shaped Mountain is an album about love and growth. At a time when divisiveness fills the headlines, Ha Ha Tonka is fighting the good fight and building narrative tributes to friends and loved ones, memories past, and prospects of the future.

The Bad Testament lands somewhere west of the Old Testament and south of an AA handbook. It’s a record of hard-grinding lost love, blues and deep, dark Americana.

Slingin’ Rhythm is just right, a finely honed, day-in-the-life brand of juke joint rhythm sitting in the sweet spot of American music invention between country, hillbilly, jazz and western swing.

On I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always, his fifth album and third for Bloodshot Records, Luke Winslow-King draws from a deep, dark creative well, turning heartbreak and divorce into an inspired soundtrack for picking up the pieces.

Struggles between balance and outburst, infectious choruses fronting emotional torment are sung with a sneer, a spit, or a tenderness and openness that is both intensely personal and universally relatable. It is, as the title suggests, real.

A psychedelic soul mantra. Taken as a meditation, it stabilizes and focuses. There might be roaches in the kitchen, but there’s roaches in the ashtray, too.