Levi Foster takes his yarn-spinning country tunes to the heart of Hollywood.
After two EPs and the success of his critically-acclaimed first album, We Made Fire, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter who draws his inspiration from the likes of Merle Haggard and Ricky Van Shelton went to Los Angeles to collaborate with Shooter Jennings, son of outlaw-country legend Waylon Jennings, known for working with musicians that fall outside the modern, mainstream Nashville approach.
According to Jennings, “When I spoke to him on the phone I really liked where he was going with everything…then when I heard the songs he put together, I thought this was going to be really great…The minute we started on the songs I was really excited right out of the gate because it was already sounding like Tony Joe Wright [sic] swampy kinda Bobbie Gentry stuff, it was really exciting…I love the songs he wrote and the stories he wove really leant themselves for a really exciting and country soundtrack.”
With Jennings taking on the role of producer, the album features a host of Grammy-Award winners and nominees who have worked with the likes of Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Mitski, Beck and Joni Mitchell.
The result is a record that places Foster’s vocal delivery front and center: a southern drawl that sounds about 20 years older than its owner. The compositions and delivery sit solidly within country, with occasional elements and arrangements that borrow from funk and alt-rock. You can hear a steadfast refusal to sound anything like the vocals on Top 10 country. There’s something else at work on that score, and that resistance is laudable, though as far as Appalachia is concerned, it occasionally falls into Early Cuyler territory, for the cartoon aficionados among us (look it up).
Shooter Jennings’ Tony Joe White comparison is apt: there’s a funky, hang-out, story-telling quality to Foster’s songwriting, and a wry tone that’s exactly White’s strong suit. And while this tendency blends the album into a whole, there are also occasional forays into more traditional Hank Williams territory, and single Bloodhound, the strongest to our ears, is reminiscent of the work of Jason Molina.
All in all, it’s a matter of sensibility: Foster has a way with words, and importantly, a way with scansion, with rhythm. It’s a world of daddies, way over yonders and rolling down truck windows, but occasionally you get a shirt that “was torn and tattered and untucked/Like an ear of corn, halfway shucked“, or someone “sweatin’ like fat Elvis/On a postcard down in Memphis Tennessee“. These are good things to come by, however delivered.
So if you like some punch to your country arrangements, a hint of nostalgia and a good-sized portion of Appalachia, try this one on for size.
Banner Music Records, 2026
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