Belle of the West

For her second album of 2017, Samantha Fish headed to Mississippi to put together a collection of down-home roots rock. The guitar slinger’s typically rollicking sound is largely replaced with an earthy backwoods bent, like the sweet folk of “Need You More” and the stomping, twangy political polemic “American Dream”. Songwriter Lillie Mae lends a hand filling out tunes—like the shadowy “Don’t Say You Love Me”—with her expressive fiddle, and Fish works out her blues on R.L. Burnside’s “Poor Black Mattie”.