Top 5 for Local Spins 2019

I've dived so deep into the rich and varied local scene that I can only think of a small handful of new national acts I bought this year.  Here's my shot at this.

1. Darcy Wilkin, Bristol:  If this got national distribution it would be Americana album of the year.  After 21 years cocooned in the Corn Fed Girls, Darcy steps out on her own and hits it out of the park with astute, sometimes harsh but always humane glimpses of lives led in quiet desperation.  Stellar production by Joe Newberry.  Wait till you hear Waiting For The Wildflowers, just, wow.

2.  Borr McFerrin, Bottle Makes Three:  years in the making, this duo album takes their country folk sound and blows it up widescreen, the sound of lives lived hard but kind.  Trains, booze, horses:  well worn Americana topics, but served up with heart, harmony, and go for broke brio.

3.  August, Bloom:  I bought this one at Sandra Effert's release show after they played a great opening set.  First spin:  oh, this is nice, inoffensive soulful pop.  Second spin:  oh wow, are those women sisters?  Those harmonies?  Third spin:  Bailey Budnick is the best undersung drummer in this town, check those jazzy fills and off beats.  Fourth and fifth and more spins:  oh damn this is album of the year isn't it.  Like a Vox Vidorra with less weighty subjects on its mind:  not a diss, we need this sort of music as soundtrack to a well rounded life.

4.  Earth Radio, Mother's Breath:  the most exciting sound in West Michigan heads for outer space, and it shows few signs of coming back till they retrieve all our lost soul singers and prog heads.

5.  Guided By Voices, Sweating The Plague:  Robert Pollard is a personal hero, parlaying a teaching career into perhaps the biggest cult following in music.  His band's third album of the year, 32nd overall, actually finds new sonic territory to explore, with perhaps the most skilled lineup of a 36 year odyssey. Rawk!

Best live show this year:  TIME OUT: An Evening of Songs and Stories with Katie & Sav of the Accidentals and Kate & Emilee of the Crane Wives, Mendel Center, Lake Michigan College, Benton Harbor:  In which all the tissues were required, on stage and off.  This special show, first of a three night run, was just what it says on the tin, four young women elaborating on what their songs mean to them.  It got really real, really fast, to the displeasure of some, to the bleary delight of others.  So much candor about anxiety, depression, disease and doubt.  And a lot of REALLY GOOD TUNES.  Em stuck to mostly unreleased material again, and Kate had a few new ones as well.  Katie had a great song, Geminids, about watching a meteor shower with her mom, cancer diagnosis looming over her like a celestial question mark.  Sav had one called Marrow, about a sick baby, that had us all bleary eyed.  Catharsis:  The Tour.  A lovely rare outing for Kate's Can't Go Back, a song that kicks my ass every time.  "It's time to be more forgiving of yourself, and your sins." Em's Destroy Everything is a gentle but insistent kick in the ass.  From my notes, can't remember context:  "Lucid nightmares speeding on M-45."  Oh lordy have I ever been there.  In my top ten shows ever.