Still + Bright

Tennessee singer, guitarist, banjo player and songwriter Amythyst Kiah has come a long way from her early roots singing Appalachian ballads and reworking country blues songs. Heavily lauded in recent years, she’s been up for a Grammy, achieved acclaim for her timely and powerful song ‘Black Myself’ from super group Our Native Daughters with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell, and gathered praise from many for her 2021 album Wary + Strange. Her new album has strong moments but struggles at times to overcome songwriting issues. It’s best when Kiah is collaborating with another artist, from Billy Strings’ guitar licks on ‘I Will Not Go Down’ to SG Goodman’s vocals on ‘Play God and Destroy the World’, or when she’s belting out a blues/gospel influenced anthem like ‘Gods Under the Mountain’. For this album, Kiah worked with other songwriters and reworked her music to focus more on her spirituality, with some surprising new age results, ‘I’m a pilgrim for the entire world,’ she sings. Kiah’s glorious voice just wants to soar on Still + Bright, and when she lets it loose it’s wonderful, but some of the songwriting drags the album, as a whole, down.