The Fashionably Late Top 125 of 2019: Yola

Another rough year corresponded to another bumper crop of excellent music. Once again, my list is huge, because I fell in love with each of these 125 records and found it impossible to not include all of them in my fashionably late list.

I'm choosing to post my favorites in alpha order from A-Z again this year. You'll probably find some records that everyone and their fifth cousin raved about, but I hope you'll also find a few records that might be new to you, and that you'll fall in love with them as much as I have.

My thanks, as always, to the artists who created these records.

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Who: Yola

What: Walk Through Fire

When: December 2019

Where: Easy Eye Sound

Why: Thanks to a voice that's commanding from the word go and a record's worth of nostalgic country-meets-soul couplings, Yola's Walk Through Fire is a doozy of a record. When the fiddle is at its most forlorn, and the lap steel at its most mournful, Yola's milk and honey tones are at their most poignant, the Bristol nightingale singing songs that can pierce the heart and sooth a the ravaged soul.

[posted 4.19.20]