Hear the Best New Folk Music with Fresh Cuts Friday
Ready for some of the best new music we’ve heard this week? It’s a great list as you’ll see below — and as you’ll hear when you join me for my “Fresh Cuts” radio hour! Listen every Friday at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific via the 24/7 stream on our website, app, or your smart speaker.
Or, just click on the Fresh Cuts stream whenever it’s convenient for you.
In the meantime, check out some of the best new music we’ve been listening to this week.
Ben Harper’s latest was released in June, but I’m not over it by any means. Wide Open Light is acoustic and stripped down. The recording of “Giving Ghosts” was done live ten years ago at the Sydney Opera House and it was the first time Harper had ever performed the song. It’s an emotional high point of the album, especially with lines like “Every day I look more like my father/And every day I look a little less like me.”
According to the band, “The Numbers” was inspired by NPR’s Kai Ryssdal and his signature phrase, “Let’s do the numbers!” on the public radio show Marketplace. The band wonders how tracking the daily economic tea leaves became a veritable religious observance for the ruling class. And you can dance to it.
A lovely and bouncy song about getting back to the present moment from your wanderings. Billy’s sophomore record (out in September) contains this great track that reminds you, as Billy says, “each time, with each small journey into the past, I’m trying to remind myself to come back, back to the present, to the beautiful wonder of something even so simple as the smell of the fresh flowers arranged right here in front of me, stems arcing into the morning light.”
