No Depression

“Fuck around and find out,” Angela Autumn implores on “In the South” off her new album Believer. But contrary to the sentiment, it isn’t an invitation to a brawl. It is coy and intriguing, an introduction to Autumn’s beguiling warble and the world she creates on Believer, one with plenty of room to be messy and, quite literally, fuck around and find out.

Labor Day is not a recognized holiday in Ireland. So while much of the US and Canada was enjoying a day off — the result of protests for fair working conditions organized by trade union workers from the late 1800s — it was just another Monday in Dundalk, in the far northeast of the Republic. Still, it was the perfect contextual backdrop for a chat with Charles Hendy of The Mary Wallopers.

More than half of 2026 is now behind us, and in case you missed it, No Depression's best albums of the year up until August can be found here. Still, August itself had lots more to offer. Spotlight artist Sera Cahoone returned with new solo music for the first time since 2018.

Two big names in the music industry announced they're suing SUNO, the most prominent musical AI company this week. Jason Isbell and his team filed a complaint on Monday (with news breaking on Tuesday) and Canadian music rights-management organization SOCAN announced its claim on Wednesday. Billboard obtained the original legal complaint and dug into the details here.

There is a fly-on-the-wall intimacy in certain moments of Lily Seabird’s third album, Lightspheres on Their Way, like watching someone quietly noodle before stumbling upon a profound golden thread, then following it to the end of the spool. Opening track “The Pulley” begins with barely a whisper of harmonium and a series of questions. “Is beauty the pulley? Your mind the weight?” she wonders.

It doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say that the world is a completely different place than it was when the Alabama Shakes last put out a record. Since the group released its sophomore album Sound & Color back in 2015, Donald Trump was elected president (twice), the Me Too

August is stuffed with outstanding blues releases. Keb’ Mo’ makes a couple of appearances, with a stripped-down acoustic album The Breakdown, as well as on the Morgan Freeman-curated Symphonic Blues Experience. Ruthie Foster is as magnificent as ever on her latest outing, Just Say Yes, on Sun records.

Never mind Americana, here’s Canadiana. Back in the late 1980s when the rootsy Toronto group Blue Rodeo arrived on the scene, Rolling Stone issued a provocative declaration: “The best new American band may very well be Canadian.” Just south of the border back then, a fledgling Minneapolis band called The Jayhawks were taking early steps toward becoming a prime mover in what became known as Americana music.

Somehow the pacifist child grew up loving pro wrestling, and the twelve-inch black and white television didn't even enter the house until the summer of the Watergate hearings, when I had the chainsaw accident. This can now be rationalized as the careful study of how character can quickly be established, how stories can be told through action, how rhetoric can be used to rile up a crowd. Sure. But it was fun, and I saw my first match Christmas Eve of 1976, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka v.

This week was, quite simply, a horrible week in roots music and the world at large. We lost two icons, Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, whose artistry and character shaped the musical genres we cover and the musicians who carry the mantle for them today. We here at No Depression