Review Roundup: Aaron Lee Tasjan and Cinder Well

It's not often that I get to write about what I consider an album of the year candidate. So imagine my surprise when not only did two hit my inbox, but they both came out the same day, 7/17/26. Musically, these two albums couldn't be more different, but they demonstrate just how broad the “Americana” label truly is.

Aaron Lee Tasjan- Get Over It, Underdog
I've had the pleasure of getting to see Aaron Lee Tasjan live numerous times in and around the Nashville area, and he keeps getting better as a performer. Judging from his new album Get Over It, Underdog, he's going to have plenty of material to keep that train rolling.

Alongside co-producer Mark Miller, Tasjan has crafted an album that bounces flawlessly back and forth between rockers, folksy numbers, and heartstring-tugging ballads. And he brought plenty of his friends to help out. The co-writers on Get Over It, Underdog are like a who's who of Nashville's best songwriters, including Brian Wright, Bobby Bare, Jr., Denny Lloyd, Jeff Ratner, and the late great Todd Snider.

One of the highlight tracks to watch for on Get Over It, Underdog is “Ballad of an East Canton Lowlife.” In a solo written by Tasjan, we meet the title “lowlife” as he is arrested for shoplifting at a Walgreens, though he assures us later that “I'm bad / But I'm good bad / I ain't evil.” Talk-singing the verses, Tasjan paints a crystal clear picture of a man who is not so much a victim of his environment as a product of it. “I made it through the 8th Grade,” Tasjan drawls, “before I got a real job. / Before steel, and iron, and women / put a curl into my back.”

Another high mark is the Denny Lloyd co-write and first album single “Science Friction.” In an age of AI, Tasjan has plenty to say about man's long and precarious relationship with technology and change. As he puts it, “Man made machines / spreading illness within him / Man made machines / Putting man out of business.”

Elsewhere, Tasjan gives us stories of infatuation (“Lydia's Boots”), the increasing dumbification of humanity (“Clown Show”), the price of realizing your dreams (“The Dream Comes True”), a bit of Tom Petty-esque swagger (“Lost & Alone”), and the aforementioned Todd Snider co-write, the guitar-heavy “The Real.”

It's hard to say Get Over It, Underdog is Aaron Lee Tasjan's best album purely based on the strength of his back catalog, but it's one of his best albums, and one of the best I've heard so far this year. There's plenty of material here to fuel setlists for years to come.

Cinder Well- A Blooming Body
If you ever wondered what it would sound like if Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi started a folk band, the answer is Cinder Well. Project mastermind Amelia Baker calls her brand of roots music “doom folk,” and that's as accurate a description as you'll ever get of someone's music. There's a droning minor-chord-laden melancholy permeating A Blooming Body that owes a lot more to Candlemass than John Prine. This is made even more true by a sit-in from Bell Witch's Dylan Desmond, who provides synth across several of the album's songs.

Baker's genius lies both in finding meaning in what she calls the “kind of harsh mundanity that life can carry” and in letting moments of silence and restraint play out, pulling every ounce of weight out of each chord and lyric. Across the album's eight tracks, Baker draws meaning from shadows playing across the lawn, the act of inviting a neighbor to dinner, watching wildlife in your backyard, and a visit to the local market.

But it's the act of creation itself, of art or of craft, that brings the most sublime moment to A Blooming Body. “While the Womb Screams Silently” plays out the battle every artist or craftsman fights daily: “How do we know when it's finished?” The subject of a painting finds herself “Tied up by patriarchal dreams / Bounded by being painted perfеctly.” The artist and subject struggle with meaning and that gnawing feeling that something more is needed, until Baker ends the song with a definitive “At some point / We just stop.”

There are just too many other highlights on A Blooming Body to pick out a couple. The album is one big highlight, a hauntingly beautiful masterwork from top to bottom. It's folly to crown an “album of the year” in mid-July, especially with some roots music heavy hitters scheduled to release later in the year, but it's going to be a special album that sticks to my bones the way A Blooming Body has.