20. Various Artists — August 2025: Nick Cave
The PRF Monthly Tribute Series on Bandcamp has a simple but beautiful premise. On the first day of each month, they pick an artist. Any interested musician has that month to record a cover. They send it in, and it gets added to the resulting tribute album. Sometimes they’re ten tracks long. Sometimes they’re fifty. There’s no real curation; anyone is welcome.
Admittedly, this egalitarian approach makes for uneven listens, and I can’t claim every track of the 31 on August’s Nick Cave tribute album is a slam dunk. But the highs are high, and the swings are big. What other Cave tribute is going to feature multiple Grinderman tracks like “Depth Charge Ethel” and “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man”? Two separate artists had the wild idea to cover Bongwater’s 1990 tune “Nick Cave Dolls.” Wildest of all: The artist calling himself Christopher Cave, who sings “Red Right Hand” over the music to Christopher Cross’s yacht-rock classic “Ride Like the Wind.” Only a tribute album like this would have room for an idea that insane, and it’s the better for it. – Ray Padgett
19. Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson — What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow
Rhiannon Giddens has long been a champion of music that might need a little push to be heard. Her interest in African American string band music led to her becoming one of the founding members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, singing and playing banjo and fiddle. Over the years, she has helped to bring attention to opera, ballet, world fusion music, Celtic music, European folk music, blues, and other genres.
In the spring of 2024, she reunited with former Carolina Chocolate Drop Justin Robinson to record an album of 18 traditional songs, recorded mostly on porches in North Carolina with simple recording equipment. In addition to the music, the sounds of nature, including insects and thunder, can be heard. Many of the songs were learned from their late mentor, the legendary North Carolina Piedmont musician Joe Thompson. One is from another musical hero, the late Etta Baker. In fact, two of the porches they recorded on belonged to Thompson and Baker.
Giddens described the rationale for the project: “With the assaults on reality going on in the world today, we wanted to offer another kind of record, like walking back onto a gravel or dirt road while a stampede goes the other way. With the cicada choir, this record could’ve only happened at a certain time in the last 120 years. We doubled down on place, time, realness, and old-fashioned front porch music. It’s a reminder that another way exists, with music made for your community’s enjoyment and for dancing–not solely for commercial purposes.” – Jordan Becker
18. Margaret Glaspy — The Golden Heart Protector
Singer-songwriter/guitarist Margaret Glaspy mines the gold of other songwriters on her latest outing. She takes on well-known songs by some of our most-loved artists—Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy, John Fogerty, Jackson Browne—along with works by songsmiths closer to Glaspy’s own generation: Blake Mills, Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields), and Rufus Wainwright.
The album shines in part because Glaspy spotlights a different guest star on each track. Madison Cunningham, an exciting indie/folk artist still in her twenties, graces the opening track. Andrew Bird brings his voice and violin to a song by Wainwright. (You may remember Bird teaming up with Cunningham for one of the best cover albums of 2024.) Norah Jones lends piano and vocal harmonies to Wilco’s “Jesus, Etc.” And guitarist Julian Lage slices into Lucinda Williams’ “Fruits of My Labor” with sharp, jagged-edged leads. (Lage, who is probably the best jazz guitarist of his generation, happens to be Glaspy’s husband.) Rounding out the guest list are sarod virtuoso Alam Khan, and pop-rocker James Bay. On only one track does Glaspy go it alone, and that’s on an introspective “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.”
The album clocks in at a short 26 minutes, but The Golden Heart Protector fully satisfies. – Tom McDonald
17. Chrissie Hynde — Duets Special
Generous. Chrissie Hynde’s Duets album is a record which contains so many acts of love and indulgence for fellow artists. Not served up with self-regard of someone self-consciously doing a “good thing”, but wrapped in beautiful music. In places, Hynde lets her partners lead. But she appears to be carefully guiding Low’s Alan Sparhawk with her voice in their track. Acknowledging the difficult times he has had recently, not ignoring them, and moving at his pace. Of course, elsewhere on the album, Hynde and Debbie Harry cover a Low song, reminding Sparhawk of the love others have for him.
Sometimes her voice is the smooth one; sometimes she is adding some needed grit. Some songs are close to the original. Some are reimaginations. There are moments during “I’m Not In Love” where you have to smile at how much fun Brandon Flowers is clearly having. That does not diminish the poignancy of other moments. This is the only place where you will find kd lang doing a fine, nuanced version of Philadelphia soul. Dave Gahan, who has often appeared uncomfortable with the tropes of rock stardom, gets to imagine a different form of musical artistry, and appears to be loving it.
“It’s Only Love,” a message delivered by Hynde and Julian Lennon, is the key message of the album. There is no limit to love; why not spread it around? Of course the generosity extends to the listener. What a gift this album is. – Mike Tobyn
16. Various Artists — Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, Vol. 1
We already have certifiably-great Neil Young tributes from years past, but 2025 gave us yet another one with Heart of Gold. It’s not surprising, given Neil’s longevity and his relevance to so many varied types of musicians and music-lovers. He makes it easy to find what Heart of Gold is mining for: stylistic diversity, deep cuts balanced with hits, a mix of up-coming artists and well-seasoned vets.
This tribute features more than a few strong contributions, with no one song being an obvious standout. It’s not exactly a provocative, challenging album, but a well-rounded one with a high quality bar. The highlights for me are “Sugar Mountain” by The Lumineers, “Lotta Love” by Courtney Barnett, and “Comes a Time” by the Doobie Brothers with Allison Russell. (For those keeping score, Russell is the only Canadian on this roster.) Most listeners will find a song or two or three to add to their favorites list, and some may tap into an artist that they’d overlooked until now.
Heart of Gold ignores the last 25 years of Neil’s career, which seems a shame. Then again, the album title says “Vol. 1,” so the project is not yet complete. In fact it may be just beginning. Long may it run. – Tom McDonald
15. Willie Nelson — Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle
Haggard and Nelson had history together, dating at least as far back to the early ’70s, each bit players on the Nevada Casino circuit. Haggard, four years younger, after an early life plagued by insolvency and petty larceny, had hardened his ambition to become a country singer. It was hearing Johnny Cash sing “Folsom Prison Blues,” as a twenty-year-old inmate in San Quentin, that lit his fuse. Nelson, who had already quit Nashville in disappointment, was seeking alternative routes to satisfy his muse, with the two bonding and becoming part of the eventual “Outlaw Country” movement. Over the years they frequently appeared together, bolstered by a set of four shared duet albums, between 1983 and 2015, the last only a year before Haggard’s death.
Here the recordings have taken shape over the space of several years, between the myriad other projects that Nelson has forever on the boil. As such there are other old friends to respect; this record contains the last recordings of Nelson’s sister Bobbie and longtime drummer Paul English, who died in 2022 and 2020, respectively. The rest of the musicians are all also familiars of what Nelson calls the Family Band, producing the by now familiar mix of loving looseness, all helmed here by Mickey Raphael’s production, his harmonica a warm presence throughout. – Seuras Og
14. Various Artists — I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina
Jason Molina was the man, the inspiration, the words, and most of all the voice behind Songs: Ohia, and Magnolia Electric Company. A major force, he died too young, aged 39, a victim of his battle with alcohol, and it is perhaps only now the importance of his legacy is making itself extant. Had he got sober, and maybe a bit happier, he would undoubtedly be where Jason Isbell is now today, Kindred spirits both, each had a canny way around a maudlin melody, built over with keenly observed lyrics, often those born of experience. And boy, was he prolific, issuing a torrent of albums, often more than one a year, as well as leaving a cache of tapes behind for his record company, Secretly Canadian, to slowly sift through.
Those good folk at Run For Cover Records are responsible for this curated compilation, and, in recognition of the circumstances of his passing, 10% of the profits of each copy of I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina will be donated to MusiCares Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Fund. The contributors tend towards fellow travelers in the dusty outlands of contemporary gothic country noir, the broodier end of Americana, with MJ Lenderman, Sun June, and Hand Habits (Meg Duffy) perhaps the best known. The songs traverse the whole of Molina’s catalog, with one song emanating from his posthumous stash. – Seuras Og
13. Heather Grey — Head Nod, vol. 1
13. Kassa Overall — Cream
I know, I know: I’m cheating, cramming two albums in one position. But they are thematically linked. Both are jazz-inflected instrumental tributes to hip-hop classics.
Kassa Overall is a jazz drummer, who makes everything from Notorious BIG’s “Big Poppa” to Wu Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” sound like a cut from an old Blue Note album. Heather Grey, meanwhile, is a Salt Lake City producer who brings in more downtempo electronic touches to his covers. He tends to mash up two tracks in one, like Madvillain’s “All Caps” with Jay-Z’s “D-Evils” or Gang Starr’s “Full Clip” with, again, “C.R.E.A.M.”
You don’t need just one of these records. You need them both. – Ray Padgett
12. Prince Royce — Eterno
If you are brushing up on your Spanish ahead of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Half Time Show, this is the album for you. Prince Royce puts a bachata twist on a variety of classics, like those from The Temptations, The Beatles, and Fleetwood Mac, that are “eternal” in their own way. Once you settle in to the album, you hardly notice him switching back and forth between English and Spanish; it’s a fluid bilingualism. Every song has a feel good sound, and all add an instrumental flair that make the cover distinctive beyond the lyrical changes. A stand-out for the combination of vocal and instrumental choices is “Killing Me Softly” with its groovy flair. – Sara Stoudt
11. Photo Ops — Opening Up To Strangers
Terry Price, the name before “and friends” in Photo Ops, recorded a collection of covers in his Los Angeles apartment, covers ranging from the Smiths to The Sound of Music. “A lot of these songs I connected with when I was really young,” he said. “And they just made such a profound impression on me. It sent my imagination and my heart soaring.” Giving ’80s favorites and classic rockers alike a gauzy dreampop sound, Price calls Opening Up To Strangers “the cover record of my dreams,” and if you give it half a chance, you might be calling it that too. – Patrick Robbins
Read this twice and I’m missing something. What happened to “Spanglish Latin-pop takes on Air Supply.” I have some in-laws who actually love Air Supply – yes – and was going to hook them up on our holiday visit! Great list tho!
Hey, Joel – the #12 album Eterno includes a cover of “All Out Of Love.”
https://youtu.be/g3ngT57ozXI?si=a9iqFI7BRM7i6UGw