13 UNDERRATED SINGER/SONGWRITER ALBUMS
Get your feelings ready.
Welcome to our fourth installment of the one-off that turned into a feature because you guys loved it. I hope you’re not sick of it by now. Let’s shake things up a bit and turn down the noise for this one, shall we? Unplug, sit down, take a deep breath, and listen to those voices pouring their hearts out. And hopefully realise that a lot of this stuff is actually heavier and crushes you more brutally than the noisiest of noisy noise. I hope you discover something new and enjoy these suggestions, let me know if you do, and also your own picks for underrated music of this kind.
The same principles as always apply. In case you haven’t read the other ones, real quick:
“underrated” is a debatable and fluid concept;
so is “singer/songwriter” and every other kind of music classification;
have fun and show me your list!;
here are the other three 13 Underrated lists so far: doom metal, black metal (of the 21st century) and noise rock.
Ready? Let’s do this.
Anjimile
The King
(4AD)
2023
I still don’t understand why Anjimile is not currently headling the likes of Primavera or Le Guess Who? or other important alternative festivals. This extraordinary artist from Boston (with Black Malawian roots) seemed to have everything ready to blow up with this album from 2023. It’s got everything - impactful, profoundly emotional songs about both personal and generational trauma, poetical yet brutally honest takes on dealing with homophobia, transphobia, racism and police brutality among other things (the line “if you treat me line an animal / I’ll be an animal” on ‘Animal’ is enough to shake you to the core), Anjimile’s soulful, deeply expressive voice at the core of it all, veering between electro/alt pop and almost full blown industrial but with that singular, one-person-vs-the-world unmistakable identity of folk… I could go on. It’s on 4AD, for fuck’s sake. It even got great reviews on some of the more prestigious outlets. Anjimile themself describes the making of the album as “an incredible, emotional, painful, exultant, transformative experience,” and honestly, that’s exactly what it feels like to experience as a listener as well. After the sort of breakout that 2020’s ‘Giver Taker’ represented, already a proof of Anjimile’s unique take on songwriting, this should have seen them rise in a similar way to, say, Perfume Genius or some of the few with whom you can trace a few parallels. So far it seems it hasn’t, but it’s up to you guys to change that.
Azevedo Silva
Tartaruga
(Lástica)
2007
I picked ‘Tartaruga’ because it was his first album - and also the first I listened to - but between his first demo in 2006 and his last album ‘V’ in 2014, Azevedo Silva’s body of work is consistently excellent. With a very Portuguese kind of melancholic expression, evoking some of the feelings found in the most legendary protest singers like Zeca Afonso but also a very urban, modern moroseness alongside it, Silva isn’t exactly for everyone (especially with the Portuguese lyrics, even if they are remarkable), but with the current artistic acceptance of stuff that is a little more “exotic” or beyond the algorithm-approved norms, I’m convinced he could capture a significant number of hearts and minds throughout the world, much more than he did during his years of activity. I honestly don’t know what’s become of this mysterious figure - known by several names, including Luís and Gonçalo, he once said in an interview about this “alter ego” that “Azevedo Silva is that guy who is always on the brink of giving up on his art.” Though it’s been over a decade since we last heard of him, I sincerely hope he hasn’t.
Christian Kjellvander
I Saw Her From Here / I Saw Here From Her
(Startracks)
2007
I know, I know, I have manifested my obsession for Christian’s latest album ‘Hold Your Love Still’ a few times (like, you know, here, or here, and I even called the man when he was driving to talk to him about it), but I cannot stress enough how essential the rest of his discography here. I won’t even mention Loosegoats or Kjellvandertonbruket, he says while mentioning them, but this gentleman has luxurious, masterfully written albums from like twenty years ago already and the rest of the world seems be particularly slow on catching up with them. ‘I Saw Her From Here/I Saw Here From Her’ is as quirky and irresistible as its title already suggests. Only his third album, it already shows that the Swedish troubadour really nailed that unique mix of sombre, quiet sadness and tongue-in-cheek euphoria of his very early on. A song like opener ‘Poppies And Peonies’, with its central “I wanted you to need me / And I wanted to need you” motif, develops almost imperceptibly, but when you stop to think, you realise it’s got you by the heart, squeezing it to a tiny little ball of thoughtful desolation. Christian’s voice is as deep and human as it is mournful and full of longing, and only he could carry, for instance, the Smiths-like line “You can only ever die in two arms / And I like yours the best” on ‘Two Souls’ with as much funereal finality as festive gusto and make you feel all the array of stuff that’s in between those things. And you know what? Between this and ‘Hold Your Love Still’ there’s over half a dozen records of similarly mostly unsung genius to discover. Go do it before the new album, currently being recorded, is done and adds one more to your to-do list.
Counterfeit Madison
Opposable Thumbs
(Anyway Records)
2017
clipping. playing Roadburn on the Main Stage, the first of two sets, April 19th 2024. Quite an event this was already, a big band that a lot of people in the festival’s community had been asking for years. Halfway through the set, Daveed Diggs introduces, rather emotionally, in a curious “you guys have no idea what you’re in for” kind of way, a guest singer, Counterfeit Madison. A quick peek on Instagram from the more ignorant among us (I admit, me) reveals a “pianist, improviser, songwriter, nigerian, crybaby” named Sharon. ‘All In Your Head’ revealed a powerful, gospel-like, older-than-time, deeply soulful voice. And then came ‘Story 5’, performed by Sharon Udoh/Counterfeit Madison nearly a-capella. First of all, you should find someone who looks at you the way Daveed looked at her during this unforgettable few minutes. And then, find something you can do that will reduce a 3.000-plus capacity room to a mess of quietly sobbing adults like she did. No one was expecting that emotional gut punch, but we were all the better for having taken it. Clearly the highlight of the festival and a story to tell about that singer who shut us up and made us cry with the power of her voice. Naturally, I went a-investigatin’ right after that, and while Sharon’s recorded output under her own (stage) name isn’t vast, this beautiful oddity of a record really stands out. “Funk + punk + sadness” is how she described her style when it came out a few years ago, and I really won’t even try to come up with a better take on it. Emotionally moving but never in a way you can predict, constantly throwing curveballs at you, from gospel to electronics, from screaming to choirs to joyful choruses, both whimsical and traumatic often in quick succession, haunted by ghosts as diverse as David Bowie or Nina Simone, it’s a truly one of a kind listen. By the way, Sharon is going through a tough time right now after having been the victim of a housing scam, right after returning from tour. Help her out if you can.
David Poe
Love Is Red
(Ulftone Music)
2005
I can pinpoint the exact date I discovered David Poe - November 28th, 2004. I was living in Helsinki at the time, and Ed Harcourt, of whom I was already a big fan, came to town during the tour of his amazing third album ‘Strangers’. As I entered the Tavastia club, on the side of the merch table where the stuff belonging to the dude opening up the show was, there hung a large banner saying “‘Love Is Red’ is the album of the year” - Ed Harcourt”. You know what you think in these occasions, right? You’re like, yeah, I’m sure it is, Ed. I got the CD more like a joke than anything else. But then came David Poe’s show. He first introduced himself saying he came from New York and apologised, “we tried!”, he said, referring to George W. Bush’s reelection that had taken place only a few weeks before, which seemed like the ultimate disaster at the time - barely did we know what was still in store for us, right? Anyway, David’s sardonic sense of humour, the bittersweet, sort of cynical songs, the delivery, everything was badass. He even later joined Ed on stage to play a couple of songs with him at the end of the headliner’s show, and it was once again awesome. Suddenly I was excited about the CD I had gotten earlier just because it was cheap and I owned all of Ed’s stuff already, and once I got home and played it, a long and still ongoing love connection was established. I later discovered this was only a sort of a new album - recorded in a pre-WWII bunker in Berlin, it’s a mix of re-recordings of songs from David Poe’s first two albums (1997’s T Bone Burnett-produced ‘David Poe’ and 2002’s ‘The Late Album’) and some new material, but whatever. The smokey, intimately minimalist vibe makes these the definitive versions of these songs, regardless of anything else. The themes are fairly simple, family issues, broken relationships, love, but Poe’s songwriting genius plus his characteristic turn of phrase turn them into something almost transcendental. From the enthusiastic yet totally loaded comparison on ‘You’re The Bomb’ to the increasingly skeptical ‘Moon’ (from “It sounded fine to me / Who wouldn't want to be illuminating lovers / Or controlling the sea? / Who wouldn't want to be the moon?” to “She sent me to the shadows every night / When the revolutions came, I shivered, thin / She eclipsed me by the cycle of her whim / When she said all this / I wasn't so hot on the moon”), from the bitterness of the divorce song ‘Settlement’ to the almost esoteric closer, a sort of ultimate break up song, ‘Love Won’t Last The Afternoon’, there’s entire stories of humanity and love and loss contained in each song, as much storytelling as inward soul-searching, and you’ll feel every bit of them as you sing along with every captivating, memorable melody line. I’m glad this is a record that’ll stay fresh in our ears and heart forever, because unfortunately (for us) David is a busy dude, composing music for film, television and dance, so the follow up to ‘Love Is Red’, the beautiful ‘God & The Girl’, took a whole decade to show up. Now, eleven years after that one, we’re still waiting for the next chapter. Come on already, dude.
El Hijo
Las Otras Vidas
(Acuarela Discos)
2007
El Hijo is Abel Hernández, a Spanish musician from Madrid who founded this solo venture after the end of his two previous bands, Emak Bakia and Migala. Far away from the electronics and rock of his earlier output, this, the first El Hijo album, stripped things down to the bare minimum and features his voice and acoustic guitar as main vehicles of expression, aided by subtle pianos, synths, percussion and other occasional barely-there instruments. Songs exist essentially on the weight of the atmosphere provided by their writing alone, a 60s folk vibe with a little psychedelia infused. It’s hard to make something so memorable with so little, but all of these songs hold up absolutely brilliantly. The beautiful illustrations by Raquel Manchado really put you in the correct mind space even before a note is played - a little surreal, a little dark, a little sad even, but welcoming and even sweet once you get inside those woods with all your animal friends. Abel’s softly sung voice fits this pastoral trip perfectly and his lyrics warrant a translation from Spanish if you don’t know the language, they are that evocative and interesting. Other El Hijo albums saw the talented musician experimenting with several other genres and also warrant your further exploration, but the rare touching quality of this record remains unsurpassed.
Eric Bachmann
To The Races
(Saddle Creek Records)
2006
You might have heard of Eric Bachmann before through one of his many other guises - he is the frontman for both Archers Of Loaf and Crooked Fingers, has played with Micah P. Hinson, and also dabbled in production (having worked on several Azure Ray albums for instance). Though all of these are activities of great worth (I have an enormous love, not to mention their complete discographies, for all of these bands/artists mentioned, no exceptions), it’s Eric’s solo albums that manage to rip my heart in two with the greatest of ease. 2016’s self-titled and 2018’s ‘No Recover’ could also easily be in this list, but I’ll go with his first since it was also my first listen to him in this format. It’s an instant grabber, for all the right reasons. Not only are the songs subtle, but perfectly crafted, full of little details that maintain the dynamics despite the overal sombre atmosphere, but Eric’s hoarse and honest voice lends his sparsely poetic lyrics a great deal of weight - to the point that even something as potentially creepy as sneaking inside someone’s home to watch them sleep (‘Genevieve’) becomes a bittersweet, relatable tale of unrequited love. Even when the pace picks up a little, like on the jaunty ‘Genie Genie’ (“A cure for the pain, a doctor man, a bucket of cocaine / Give me something, I'm looking for something / One true love to find one more loss I can throw behind me / Give me something, I'm looking for something”), there’s still a slow-moving, permanent existential ache in the background, permeating every word. A great companion piece to loneliness, this one.
Gabriel Bruce
Love In Arms
(Luv Luv Luv)
2013
Sometimes you hear a song, and it doesn’t matter where you are or what it is - if it hits you, you just know. You can be at a supermarket (how I first heard Jim Croce when I was young), or listening to it on shitty speakers at a bar before a gig (how I first heard Moor Mother), watching a mainstream late night talk show (how I first heard The Magnetic Fields) or calmly watching a fun TV series like ‘Good Girls’ - where at the end of episode 4 of season 3, during a particularly meaningful scene, Gabriel Bruce’s ‘El Musgo’ comes on. The line “I hear your voice / It's loud and clear / I thought we were close / But you were just near” was enough to make my brain go into “hang on a minute” mode, but the whole vibe of the song and the singer’s deep voice immediately forced me to whip out my phone and Shazam the hell out of it. Within minutes I was listening to ‘Love In Arms’ (technology, eh? If this happened to me when I was a kid, it would have taken me weeks to even discover the name of the song, and a couple of months more to track down the album where it was from), and I’ve been devoted to it ever since. Inhabiting the sparse no man’s land between Nick Cave’s more carnivalesque moments, Leonard Cohen’s more tongue-in-cheek, synth-based ‘I’m Your Man’ phase kind of material and Ed Harcourt’s brokenhearted playfulness, Gabriel can go from nihilistic euphoria (‘Sleep Paralysis’ and its wonderful “I’ve got this feeling that we’re dead and there’s nothing more” chorus) to danceable pop hit (‘Greedy Little Heart’, which lyrically floats around cheeky variants of “I’ve gone down on you”) to absolute piano/voice lovelorn minimalism like the emotionally crushing ‘All That I Have’ (“When I asked for an ambulance / You called me a hearse” might also just be one of the best break-up lines ever), and this is just me throwing my three favourites up in the air as examples. Even when the Cohen-isms get uncomfortably close to the original (‘Zoe’, ‘Sermon On The Mount’), you can still get it and smile along, because you know Gabriel knows it too and he’s smirking back at you about it, little imp that he is. Unfortunately, though he seems involved in several different projects, nothing much has appeared from Gabriel Bruce since - there is of course ‘Come All Sufferers’, 2016’s follow-up to ‘Love In Arms’, somewhat in the same vein and almost as good, but after that, only a few collaborations and in totally different styles. I wouldn’t expect stability from a guy capable of an all over the place record like this (which inexplicably works), but I wouldn’t mind another beautiful mess one of these days.
Holly Williams
The Highway
(Georgiana)
2013
It’s a little weird that the granddaughter of the legendary Hank Williams is underrated, but that’s precisely why I’m including Holly on this list. You’d think any kind of relation to one of the most important musicians of the 20th century would sort of automatically give you a career, and in the case of some other musicians, like Hank3 (Holly’s half-brother), for instance, it really did, regardless of their actual talent (sorry, but sub-Pantera knucklehead metal doesn’t really do it for me). I guess the rules for women might be a little different, right? Holly never met her famous grandpa, obviously (Hank Sr. died in 1953 at only 29) and she never seemed interested in exploiting that connection, all of which plays in favour of her integrity - in fact, the most poignant song on ‘The Highway’, closer ‘Waiting On June’, actually tells the remarkable life story of the grandparents she did know, the ones on her mom’s side who weren’t worldwide famous people. I wouldn’t even entirely classify her music as county, though there’s obviously traces - she feels much more like a follower of the folk/Americana school of Bruce Springsteen more than anything else, and there’s a gritty honesty to these songs that really set her apart from most other musicians attempting this sort of thing. Her first two albums, 2004’s ‘The Ones We Never Knew’ and 2009’s ‘Here With Me’, already showed an exceptional talent for the crafting of songs (this stuff really seems to run in your blood), but ‘The Highway’ is clearly her highest point in every department. I heartily recommend her awesome NPR Music Tiny Desk session where she performs beautiful versions of a few of the album’s best songs (including my favourite, ‘Railroads’, about a gang of moonshiners). I would say “unfortunately” she hasn’t put out any more music in the eleven years since then, but then again, she’s had four kids, she’s running a business and she seems really happy, so hey. She also mentions still writing for her fourth album every now and then, so there is hope.
Kate Mann
Things Look Different When The Sun Goes Down
(Orange Dress Records)
2009
I first became aware of Kate Mann through the gloriously over the top gothic cabaret of Ashcan Orchid on their only album, 2010’s ‘The Woods’ (seriously, check it out), as she sang and played on most songs of that record, and brilliantly so. Her solo albums, while not at all as wild like that strangely forgotten anomaly, do follow a similar kind of approachable darkness - it’s like, the devil is always there behind you when you’re singing, but all he wants is just to dance a little jig with you. Kate’s unique take on Americana and folk gives you a desert-gazing, rough side of the tracks sort sincerity, both in her uncluttered songs and in her pure, unaffected voice. Not everything is beautiful in these tales, but the earthy, genuine connection assures that everything means something. From the jangly, whistled beauty of ‘Bird In My House’ to the the terrible ghost story of ‘La Llorona’ (the original folklore of the subject matter is all sort of fucked up already), not to mention that fateful moment of decision whether to join your demons or cast them away (‘Robert Johnson Knew’), every song on here will resonate deeply no matter what your background. There is an old - or better yet, timeless - quality in Kate’s voice that absolutely fits the nature of this music and also turns it into timeless pieces. By the way, I picked ‘Things Look Different…’ for this list as, due to the power of the first album you listen to by a new artist, it’s still my favourite, but if you dig it, do go on and listen to her entire discography, it’s totally worth it and equally as brilliant.
Kristian Harting
Float
(Exile On Mainstream)
2014
I first heard Kristian on an old edition of the beautiful South Of Mainstream festival. Its associated label, Exile On Mainstream, always had a knack for discovering these lost, lonely souls along the road (a couple of years before, they had gifted us Conny Ochs, for instance), so every time there was a record or a show by a solo performer I didn’t know, I paid attention. Of course it paid off - this Danish singer/songwriter has a unique sensibility in his craft, to the point where it’s actually even hard to gauge whether these songs are sparse or busy. There’s both acoustic and electric instrumentation at work, even some vocal effects here and there (echoes and stuff), with more layers of sound and more detail than is the norm for this sort of thing - or at least for those more minimalist, someone alone with his guitar kind of records that end up being my favourites. Yet, for all this more elaborate kind of approach, Kristian’s songs actually feel lonelier and sparser than others with significantly less stuff happening. Even ‘Queen Of The Highway’, which threatens at the beginnig to turn into a foreboding sort of rock monster, dissolves its stomp progressively and even ends up as one of the most touching highlights. ‘Float’ is a triumph of subtlety, of slowly getting under your skin, of using more to accomplish less, but in the very best sense. It wasn’t a one trick pony kind of effort either, as Kristian then followed ‘Float’ up with ‘Summer Of Crush’ in 2015 and ‘The Fumes’ in 2020, which further developed and evolved his songwriting into slightly different paths, but both are very recommended as well. I can’t wait for his next step.
Paula Frazer
A Place Where I Know: 4-Track Songs 1992-2002
(Fargo Records)
2003
This is the oldest record on this list, and I remember clearly the first time I saw it - on a record store, they had it up on a listening station (remember those?) and there was a big sticker saying “if Tarantino did a Western, this could be the soundtrack”, which immediately grabbed my attention. Note, obviously, that this was a full twelve years before ‘The Hateful Eight’, so a Tarantino Western was something entirely built on imagination, and that was a vibe I totally wanted to be captured in music. I immediately put on the headphones and launched into opener ‘The Only One’, and by the end of the song I had already decided I’d buy the record, of course. There was indeed a dusty, old American West feeling to this, but not in an overbearing, douchebag-cowboy kind of way. No, besides being obviously feminine, this was tough but fragile at the same time, it was emotional music that didn’t “insist upon itself”, as Peter Griffin would probably put it. The barebones recording environment (it’s right there in the title, it’s Paula, her guitar and a 4-track, nothing more) gives the songs a fantastic ghostly quality that benefits them to no end. Like on ‘An Awful Shade Of Blue’, when the guitars cascade around you around the 1:35 mark, and there’s a lot of saturation and everything crackles and it’s just exactly what the song needs to transmit at that point. There are actually a few old videos of Paula recording this stuff in a hallway and they’re an entire lesson for all you over-ambitious musicians and engineers out there - if she can do it like this, and make it even better because it was done like this, then maybe so can you. Of course, after getting the record all those years ago, I then discovered that Paula Frazer was the founder of Tarnation and I’ve followed her career and the band’s since, and so should you, mind you, but let’s face the fact that the otherworldly magic contained in these rough recordings will probably never be matched.
Tim Barry
Lost & Rootless
(Chunksaah Records)
2014
Yeah, it’s Tim Barry from Avail. Of all the rock and metal and other genres’ musicians that ever picked up an acoustic guitar and became folk dudes and dudettes, Tim might have been one of the most unlikely. Not to say anything against the man and his pre-solo career talents, but it’s just not a leap I would see coming when I was a teenager listening to ‘Dixie’ or ‘Over The James’, no matter how good of a punk singer Tim was/is, and not even considering he was part of the more folky (Young) Pioneers. But yeah, eight albums and twenty years later, his solo career speaks for himself. The appeal is really simple - the songs are brutally honest and real, there’s no fuss and no bullshit, it’s family, it’s your hometown, it’s love and loss and loyalty and betrayal and getting hurt and back up again, it’s riding rails and enjoying the few bits of happiness you get when the sun is shining - over the James, naturally. Tim is an extraordinary songwriter and has a particular knack for wrenching moving poetry out of the most mundane or less transcendental subjects, and that’s what’s all over these songs. And hey, when I finally also disappear up a mountain and leave all of this shit behind, I don’t even have to write a letter, I’ll just leave ‘Mayfly’ playing on repeat for anyone who might come looking for me. “I hate to leave such a mess / but you always do your best.”
Whiskey Priest
Hungry
(Bric A Brac)
2007
An old favourite that I discovered randomly after reading an online review at the time and immediately impulse-ordering it from CD Baby (remember?), Whiskey Priest is Noah Hall, a musician from Oregon who was/is also a member of Easterly and created the Class Picture Project. The fragility and simple outpouring of heavy emotions on this record floored me from the very first listen and it’s still, after all these years, in my regular rotation, so much that I tracked down the rather elusive Noah for a podcast episode a couple of years ago, and he even shared some unreleased music with us. He’s gone quiet again since then, so I think I’ll drop him an email to pester him once more and see what’s up. In the meantime, ‘Hungry’ will keep spinning, over and over and over. Let it conquer you too, it’s outrageously beautiful in a quietly broken kind of way. No one else could update the Beatles for these twisted times with the type of sweet cynicism Noah did on ‘Love And A Gun’, for instance.
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