The Life & Songs of Emmylou Harris: An All-Star Concert Celebration

From 2016. The attraction is just as much the truly all-star gathering of performers as the songs themselves - mostly not written by Harris herself but nonetheless strongly associated with her. 

The stand-outs for me are Holly Williams and Chris Coleman's "Orphan Girl" (an outlier in the sense that for me it will always be completely a Gillian Welch song, but consistent with much of the rest of the set in that it feels like a modern-day standard), Mary Chapin Carpenter and Vince Gill's "All the Roadrunning", Alison Krauss's predictably beautiful but still very beautiful take on "Till I Gain Control Again" (which she's also recorded in studio since) and the everyone-at-once "Boulder to Birmingham" which is an iconic moment even among icons in Harris's back catalogue.

Jane Gazzo and Andrew P Street - Sound as Ever: A celebration of the greatest decade in Australian music, 1990 - 1999

Bought in a moment of weakness. Brought back memories.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit + Allison Russell @ the Palais, Thursday 6 April

What Jason Isbell does isn't complicated, but nor is it easy. Live, both the jangle and the soul in his songs was apparent, with an understandable lean towards the rockier end of his catalogue - a fair bit of which he covered in this set, which was also a reminder of how consistently concise and good are the songs that he writes, with basically no filler.

In a pretty big bonus, Allison Russell was the support act, and was good as expected.

(w/ R)

The Lone Bellow - Love Songs for Losers

Whether it's where the Lone Bellow are in their trajectory, or where I am in my trajectory with them, Love Songs for Losers comes off a bit too much to the 'easy listening' side of things for me to really take to heart. But that isn't to say there aren't some good tunes here; I particularly like "Unicorn".

Thelma Plum - Meanjin ep

Two particularly excellent songs in "The Brown Snake" and "Backseat of My Mind" across an ep that sustains its listenability all the way through. Great stuff.

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway - Crooked Tree

A charming album of warmly golden modern day bluegrass-country. 

Margo Price - Strays

Margo Price's latest, predictably excellent album starts with a bit of a misdirect - three of the first four songs steer into the rockier sound of her last album That's How Rumors Get Started, while the other ("Radio"; track 3; featuring Sharon Van Etten) sounds like the kind of song you might put in at track 3 on a rock-leaning album, as possibly the sweetest-sounding pop song she's done yet and very much with that SVE-does-pop energy. But it turns out what she has on her mind here is something more in the realm of Fleetwood Mac - always a touchstone - and it's pretty good at that.