I have two full albums for you today. Usually even if I’m talking about a full album I try to pull out a single song to emphasize, but I’m not going to do that today because you should really listen to the entirety of both of these albums.

First up is Outside Child by Allison Russell. I first became familiar with Allison Russell as part of the folk super group Our Native Daughters. She has apparently also been a member of some other bands as well that I am not familiar with. This is her first solo album and it is a very personal album about surviving the sexual abuse she suffered from her step-father as a child. Despite some of the heavy subject matter it does not feel depressing or sad. A native of Montreal, but now living in Nashville, Russell sings in both English and French on the album. She also collaborates with fellow folk musicians Yola, Erin Rae, and the McCrary Sisters. The sounds ranges from very traditional folk almost spirituals, to more pop folk, to R&B tinged folk. It’s a glorious album and I highly recommend listening to it.

I also wanted to talk about the album So Low by Lowland Hum, which is a cover album of Peter Gabriel’s album So. They released it earlier this week on the 35th anniversary fo the original album. Let me tell you how old that made feel. The answer is very. I love the original Peter Gabriel album. It is full of some of my favorite songs. Ask me about calling a radio station over and over again trying to convince them to play “In Your Eyes” so that I could record it back when I was in middle school and I couldn’t easily get access to the music I wanted to listen to. The original album is so lush and full of instrumentation and Lowland Hum strips much of that out to create a much sparer but still rich sound full of harmonies. It’s exactly what I love in a cover song. It pays homage to original but still makes it something completely new. I also appreciate that they gender flipped the duet on “Don’t Give Up”. If you like the original album I definitely recommend listening to this cover tribute.