If you’re one of the lucky ones heading out to Louisville KY for Forecastle Festival this weekend, we know you’re gonna flock to see the headliners—and we’re right there with you. Forecastle’s big guns form quite the armory this year with sets from Run The Jewels, LCD Soundsystem, PJ Harvey, Spoon, Weezer, and Sturgill Simpson. Not to mention the glorious return of the beloved Screaming Eagle himself, Mister Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires.
That said, if you scroll on down the lineup, it’s fully packed with exciting, dynamic acts right down to the very end. Here’s a list of the top 10 bands it would be criminal to miss.
Big Thief
Brooklyn’s Big Thief’s music, rooted in the songs of Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals) paints in vivid tones. Their highly anticipated second record Capacity was release last month and shows us the gentle side of being ripped open, and then recounts the second act of pulling oneself back together to prepare for it all to happen again.
Whitney
Whitney tries to make the kind of songs they’d be jealous of if someone else got there first. Formed from the core of guitarist Max Kakacek (ex-Smith Westerns) and singing drummer Julien Ehrlich (ex-Unknown Mortal Orchestra),the band itself is something bigger, something visionary, something neither of them could have accomplished alone.
Aaron Lee Tasjan
East Nashville-based musician Aaron Lee Tasjan has always considered himself a songwriter first and foremost, writing his own off-kilter folk-inflected songs since he picked up his first acoustic as a teen guitar prodigy. His New West Records debut, Silver Tears, shows his artistic ambitions and solidifies him as one of the most intriguing singer/songwriters to emerge in sometime.
Adia Victoria
Adia Victoria is establishing a fresh reference point on the musical landscape. From blood-born howls to idiosyncratic phrasing, she is the big red dot saying You Are Here. The Nashville-based artist travels the lands of rock, afro punk, and country, squarely situated in the continent of the Blues.
Mondo Cozmo
Born in Philadelphia and now based in East Los Angeles, Mono Cozmo raised a big middle finger to all opposition, and in 2016 began releasing songs that could’ve been cut under the influence of a “Champagne Supernova” inside a Seattle warehouse if this were the nineties…but it’s not. His latest work, Plastic Soul, will be released in a few weeks. He did it all by deconstructing everything you know and reconstructing it with a rawness the world hasn’t felt since Pearl Jam’s Vs. or Springsteen’s Born To Run. That’s Plastic Soul.
John Moreland
John Moreland’s latest album, Big Bad Luv, is the record he made after, after everything in his life changed. For the better. He sings in one of those accents from flyover country that’s impossible to locate and implausible to mimic. (Texas, by way of Northern Kentucky, but mostly Tulsa, as it happens.) He sings directly from his heart, with none of the restraint and filters and caution the rest of us would apply for public protection. He sings with resolute courage.
Twin Limb
Lucy Dacus
Sharp lyrical observations, playful turns of musical phrase, hooks that’ll embed themselves in your frontal lobe for days is what you’ll experience at Lucy Dacus’ set this Saturday afternoon. She has a keen sense of self and that shines clearly on her debut No Burden.
Pell
Born and raised in New Orleans but forced, at 13, to relocate with his family to Jackson, Mississippi when Hurricane Katrina hit and destroyed their home—has been praised for fusing precise lyricism and soulful singing into an eclectic sound, entirely his own.
Sun Seeker
Sun Seeker has drawn applause for their unhurried breed of Cosmic American Music and with BIDDEFORD (Third Man Records), their long awaited debut EP, the Nashville-based band more than affirm their promise. The EP – which follows Sun Seeker’s widely acclaimed Third Man debut single, 2016’s “Georgia Dust” b/w “No One Knows” (TMR322) – sees Alex Benick (guitar, vocals), Asher Horton (bass guitar, vocals), and Ben Parks (drums, vocals) exploring nostalgia, melancholy, and emotional turmoil via laidback psychedelia pollinated with tight harmonies, classic folk songcraft, and country rock spirit, an ageless approach that is simultaneously archetypal and now utterly their own.
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