Congratulations to Rhiannon Giddens and The Staves, who have been nominated for UK Americana Awards. Giddens is up for International Artist of the Year and The Staves for UK Artist of the Year and UK Album of the Year, for Good Woman. (Also up for the latter two awards is Yola, for her new album.) The UK Americana Awards will be presented in a ceremony at Hackney Empire in London on January 27, 2022, as part of AmericanaFest UK.

Rhiannon Giddens's new album, They’re Calling Me Home, was recorded during the COVID-19 lockdown in Ireland with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. The two expats found themselves drawn to and comforted by the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland, which they recorded at a spare studio on a working farm outside of Dublin. The result is a twelve-song album that speaks to the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical call "home" of death. You can hear it and get a copy of the album here.

Good Woman, The Staves' first album in six years, was written and recorded in a time of turmoil for the band—the end of relationships, the death of their beloved mother, and the birth of Emily’s first child. Produced by John Congleton, the album stands as a testament to strength—of sisters, mothers, daughters—to love, loss, and change. To trying to be a good woman. "It’s a brilliant record, their new, fuller sound paying dividends," exclaims Record Collector. "It sounds cathartic to have recorded, and it’s cathartic to listen to." You can hear it and get it here.