So disappointed in today's Americana


I make it a habit of getting the Grammy nominated Americana albums from the library each year. Past years have introduced me to much new music, some good, some bad, some treasures (TajMo for example). This year I just listened to Brandi Carlile's cd 'By the way I forgive you', nominated for best Americana roots album. OMG it is unlistenable! You would think singer / songwriters would strive for a pristine recording that highlights their lyrics and mostly acoustic arrangements. No - it is a sonic mess, compressed all to hell. To quote my wife "Turn that crap off". End of rant. 
mcondo
Anybody ever hear of Frank Black & the Catholics? Found them by accident years ago and keep listening to them every once in a while. He's the lead singer for the Pixies.
Check out Eilen Jewell.  Great singer/songwriter and she has one of the best guitar players I’ve ever heard.  
Americana? Dale Watson. I’ve seen him several times and he’s always talking about Americana. Puts on a hell of a show.
Patty Griffin's newest is so great, I agree.  I don't see a title for the disc, but its sure wonderful!
I'm still not sure what constitutes "Americana" and I don't care much for folk music but if blues influenced music is part of that then check out Martin King out of Greenville, SC. If traditional R&B with an emphasis on the 'B' is Americana then check out Vintage Trouble out of L.A. and Leon Bridges from Texas.

Bridges is the real deal.
@OP You are spot on that this genre or category is weaker than it should be.

I can find few Americana artists worth passing on to others.    One I think is about the best I've heard in a long, long time is JS Ondara.  



Thanks for Chris Hillman. Then there’s David Crosby’s “Here if You Listen”. Tidal MQA
Have seen Rhiannon live with Carolina Chocolate Drops at City Winery. One of the best shows we saw that year!
I guess my fix is not to listen to heavily compressed recordings in my main system. BTW - watched Brandi Carlile on the 2018 Americana awards show last night. Nice performance that sounded good on my upstairs A/V system. The rest of the show was a little uneven but enjoyable.   
Regarding Brandi Carlie and others...

Is it not possible to separate the talent from the sonics here?

I’m not going to stop listening/enjoying music because of less than perfect recording quality.

We all know this is a problem. One that the end user has to deal with. That is the area we have control over. I get tired of reading..."my wife came in the room and said "turn that -hit off". While that sort of statement makes for good reading?, it just adds to the negative side without actually trying to fix(?) in one's own space.

Quit complaining and start explaining how you're trying to overcome!
I forgot about M.C. Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger), saw him on the Tift Merritt and friends tour a while back.

Uncle Tupelo 
Son Volt
Calexico
The 2018 awards show is streaming now at the PBS website. Not sure if it will be broadcast over the air on my PBS station - WTTW.
The Americana Music Association puts on its' own awards ceremony and show every year; that's the one to watch. Their relationship to The Grammys is very much like High End Audio's is to CES. A good source for info on Americana music and artists is the No Depression website.
@audiojedi , listening to Hiss Golden Messenger right now, Lateness of Dancers. Getting a Dylan vibe from the first two songs. I like it.

Just wondering where on earth the name comes from?
I can't think of a worse place to start to find good music.

Some good suggestions here for sure - Gillian Welch, Sarah Jarosz, Wood Brothers, Barr Brothers(more Canadiana maybe?), Jason Isbell, Kasy and Clayton, I'm With Her etc 

If you like the genre definitely check out Hiss Golden Messenger - his past few albums are really great and I would argue that Lateness of Dancers is one of the best albums to be released in the past bunch of years.  Great sound and songwriting 

The Americana roundup in Uncut magazine is a great resource - I've found a ton of great music through reading this publication in all genres.

Lots of great new music out there but you do often have to hunt a bit to find the good stuff...
Brandi Carlisle won the Americana grammy. I guess I don't know what Americana is nowadays.
Someone new to me that people may enjoy is Amy McCarley.  New album is Meco.   Stands for main engine cut off.  Alabama native who was a NASA contractor.   Marty Stuart and other Nashville folks play on this.  Really great music, well worth a listen.    
The DR measurements on Sarah Jarosz's albums seem to hover around 8, which I consider marginal but darn good compared to some of the albums mentioned above. There are folks here at Audiogon who consider anything less than 10 to be poor. So whoever her engineer is, either he is part of the problem or someone else is compressing the work after he's done with it.

Some Steely Dan albums up up around 16. Mark Knopfler, until recently, was typically in the 12-14 range. Pete Townshend's White City averages 12. 
Love Sarah, haven't listened to her in a while. Will pick up Undercurrent from the library for a listen. 
@whart 

I agree with you in your analysis of what may make up Americana. It's very difficult these days to pigeon hole a specific genre because of the genre bending going on.

Love Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan/Crooked Still, Sara Watkins......
Sarah Jarosz is recorded by one the best engineers in the business. Follow him for great records, Gary Pacozsa.  His records are ridiculously good.  "Follow Me Down" (her #2 album) and Build Me Up from Bones (#3) both got Grammy noms.  Her latest Undercurrent was nominated for Best American Roots performance, Best Folk Album and Best Engineered Album.   He did Alison Krauss "Windy City" and "Deep Waters"  from The Lone Heartstring Band. "Forever Words" Johnny Cash and "Cover Stories, 10 years", Brandi Carlile.   Find his records on
allmusic.com

Brad
Lone Mountain Audio

One of the more unusual "Americana genre" performances was Robert Plant's Band of Joy performance at the 2010 Americana awards. I think having recorded with Alison Krauss and with Patti Griffin in the band gave them some Americana cred - but it was pure rock with some roll mixed in. 
That piece in the Times is actually pretty thoughtful and well written.
I don't listen using ear buds but occasionally listen to something over my laptop simply to hear it, not for any serious listening-- and I'm surprised at how much difference you can hear despite the file compression (e.g. MP3, not dynamic compression). This would tell me that the fad of loudness wars isn't to compensate for inadequacies of the playback device--much like dynamic compression of TV commercials, it is used to grab attention. But, how much long term enjoyment from something that is always at "11"?
I know I'm preaching to the converted here....
As to "Americana," i don't know that it is a very definite genre- it seems to be an amalgam of folk, (old) country (as distinguished from 'new' country which is really '70s soft rock), and a few other genres-bluegrass, for example, thrown in the mix. It is probably a catch-all for other things that don't clearly fit into another pigeonhole; I'm surprised Gary Clark, Jr. is labelled as Americana, since I considered him more a blues guy-- but, just like everything else, genre labels are not very instructive. They are probably even less apt when applied to someone who is innovating and doesn't fit neatly under a category that is already well-worn by predecessors. 

I don't have an answer other than that, like most things in the pursuit of music that is fidelous, you are going to go through a lot of material and forced to be selective. 
I'm listening to Mercury Rev's Bobbie Gentry's the Delta Sweete Revisited on Tidal this morning through headphones and it sounds really nice.
Here's a current article in the NYT's about the loudness wars. It even has charts, including Brandi Carlile's grammy nominated song I was bitching about.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/what-these-grammy-songs-tell-us-about-the-loudness-wars.h...


I have to add a correction. I just got Vintage Trouble's The Bomb Shelter Sessions on CD (2011) and it does not seem as compressed as many of the other's I listed.

The DR database lists the album at 8-9 but it references a lossy medium with no other data so it was probably low-res streaming that was tested.

Anyway, I'm not saying it is Steely Dan level production quality but a good bit better than most of what we're getting these days. Kudos to the band for that.
N80 - you have expanded on my original post re: compression on today's Americana. I have listened to several of the cd's on your list and concur - why trash your sound and smash your musical arrangements. Doesn't make sense for an artist that is not going to sell tons of records. Where is the pride in your art? I would add Arcade Fire to the list as an egregious example of an excellent live band that sounds absolutely terrible on recordings. I still make a lot of mixes and once in a while I insert a modern recording I love ( lets say the Decembrists w/Gillian Welch) into a mix with an older recording ( say Led Zep Gallows Pole) - the difference in volume is huge! 
I’m not even real sure what constitutes Americana per se and not sure where R&B fits within that genre. Below is a list of bands/musicians who I think are very talented and at least somewhat retro and whose music I enjoy but whose CDs/LPs and hi res file are compressed to the point that they are nearly ruined in my opinion. With some of them you can get better quality on the LP or the hi-res file, but this is an exception rather than a rule and the improvement seems to be marginal.

Alabama Shakes
St. Paul and the Broken Bones
Leon Bridges
Vintage Trouble
The Teskey Brothers (Australian)
Neko Case
Tedeschi Trucks
Chris Stapleton (Traveller CD not too bad but not good in terms of SQ)
Gary Clark, Jr.
The Struts (not American or Americana but retro)

I think all of these are great bands with great music but horrible production quality....all related to compression/loudness. It makes me sick. I still listen to them but will admit that I typically futz with them with the computer equalizer. Pathetic. I know. But otherwise hard to listen to.

Contrast this with Mark Knopfler’s latest album, which I’m not crazy about but whose production quality is very good (10 and up on the DR database) and better on the LP.

The point is, it can be done. And I don’t think it requires much additional effort.

As a side not I was watching a YouTube video of a guy who puts together affordable vintage systems and one system had a built in equalizer with dB meters. When he went to test it he couldn’t understand why the needles on the meters were pegged in the red until he realized he was playing a contemporary, highly compressed artist. He changed to a better quality source and his meter was working just fine.

It makes me wonder that if every system had meters that allowed people to see how crappy a production was, maybe it would deter these idiot engineers from over compressing.
listening to just arrived vinyl of Sarah Jarosz - Undercurrent

standouts so far: Early Morning Light
and
House of Mercy which is in rotation on Radio Paradise...

not 100% americana..but nice imo
2018 folk/americana/country albums I like (some of the below might be a stretch but is in the wheelhouse, no comment on SQ)
Jeff Tweedy - WarmAlela Diane - CuspKacey Musgraves - Golden HourWillie Nelson - Last Man StandingStephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Sparkle HardNeko Case - Hell-OnNatalia Lafourcade & Los Macorinos - MusasMount Eerie - After (Live)Low Cut Connie - Dirty Pictures (Part 2)2019The Delines - The Imperials
ditto Rhiannon, see also her work w Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Jesse Sykes is fantastic also, sure some compression, grunge and overdrive..but wow....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqE0Ej1J3z8&list=OLAK5uy_nJVel4dRYUUUIeiT47aWig_9EhFCB_vJM

Jim Lauderdale's "Wait Til Spring" was backed by the group Donna the Buffalo, who also have some good stuff, including "Rockin In the Weary Land".  
I think if you stay in the Blues, Roots, Americana or Folk categories there are usually quality artists I haven't heard - hence off to the library to check them out.  
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Give a listen to the man behind the explosion of Americana (due to his Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack work), T Bone Burnett. His Truth Decay album on Takoma is great, musically and sonically. Look for the original Chrysalis pressing.