It feels like, in a world where the supposedly real country musicians have left the genre feeling exhausted, the responsibility for continuing the songwriting canon has fallen on unlikely shoulders—indie-rock singers. There’s a clear pipeline: Adrianne Lenker’s folky sensibilities continue to influence and transform Big Thief’s gorgeous guitar sound; Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman take the mundane details of the American South and transform them into something undoubtedly cool; and the comforting twang of the banjo has never felt more at home than in the unparalleled beauty of Phoebe Bridgers’ Graceland Too. In the wake of the early-2020s boom of frankly boring country-pop, the “do-it-yourself” ethos of the indie musician has offered an alternative way for country music to move forward, and there’s nothing that showcases it better than the music of This is Lorelei, the solo side project of Water From Your Eyes guitarist, producer and sometimes-singer-songwriter Nate Amos. 

Amos’ writing is endlessly enjoyable and effortlessly emotional, pairing self-aware wittiness with overwhelming sincerity. On his 2024 album Box for Buddy, Box for Star, he proved himself more than capable of writing a fantastic song: Angel’s Eye is a touching farewell reimagined as a duet between an angel and a cowboy, Dancing in the Club transforms a laughably bleak sense of self-pity into a shimmering, vibrant anthem, Two Legs pictures a speaker so madly in love with someone that they’d cut off their limbs just to ease a little of their partner’s inconvenience. And it’s on his most recent album under the Lorelei moniker, The Singer in My Band, that he doubles down on his singer-songwriter status, embracing the twangy guitars and semi-ironic Americana of the genre and weaving them into his own sound.

That’s not to say that Amos completely ignores his indie-rock roots, however. Tracks like Hey Sarah Is It Gonna Rain Forever, built around an impressively confusing guitar rhythm, bear a strong resemblance to the mind-bogglingly knotty nature of his guitar work for Water From Your Eyes. It’s impossible not to hear Sarah’s looped guitar rhythms and entrancing repetition and think of it as a scaled back, gentler version of a song like Water From Your Eyes’ Life Signs. His usual, slightly abstract rock song structure is also present throughout: the slightly repetitive shape of Oh No Now My reminds me of the journey that older Lorelei songs like Perfect Hand go on. Similarly, The Kid With The Crown acts as a kind of self-referential love letter to Amos’ older work, singing to who is presumably a younger version of himself, the same “buddy” that much of his previous work refers to, and intentionally referencing old lyrics. Where, in 2024 song Dancing in the Club, a forlorn Amos is stuck “dreaming all [his] dreams” after a heartbreak, in 2026 he reflects on his former self, “dream[ing] of undreaming.”

Whilst Amos’ homages to his older work and style are charming, the real highlights of The Singer in My Band come from the ways he weaves folk and country influences into his existing sound. Opening track I Will Eat My Heart in the Morning Light establishes this dynamic immediately, beginning with a comfortingly familiar guitar tone before adding a jaunty walking bassline, introducing a bluesy, country feel after the first four bars. The writing itself feels sincere and beautiful in its simplicity, describing a feeling of wanting to better himself for a lover: “I know there must be better men, but I’m not the kind to hide,” he pledges, “I will eat my heart in the morning light.” The lyrics are down-to-earth and straight to the point, much like the guitar playing—it’s impossible not to wear your heart on your sleeve when the music sounds this twangy and wistful. Similarly pretty and sincere is Sailing (Your Baby’s Down), which builds from a relatively subdued looping guitar rhythm and a simplistic country-rock beat into a gorgeous, effortlessly powerful guitar solo, Amos’ voice gently sailing over the top as he yearns for a partner to “caaaaaaaall” him. With all of the other spectacular elements of his music, it’s too easy to overlook just how beautiful and versatile Amos’ voice is, and Sailing showcases it perfectly.

It’s also clear just how much Amos has to offer as a songwriter, balancing subject matter that is often heartfelt and emotional with delightfully witty wordplay. The letter-to-a-past-self style of songwriting on The Kid With The Crown would read as much more sorrowful if not for the almost comical internal rhymes. He describes his past mistakes as the decisions of “a jerk in the dirt” … “looking for hurt,” before comforting his younger self—“you can say you’re a loser, but I’m not losing you now.” The penultimate track, And I Haven’t Seen My Love in Quite A While, is another masterfully written song, describing a relationship left painfully in the past, as the speaker asks how long it will take “for [his] memories to burn,” for him to fade away. It takes until nearly the end of the song, as a second voice begins to join the mix (that of Amos’ partner and bandmate Al Nardo), that we realise the reasons for the relationship’s ending—the speaker is dead, his lover imagining him “singing all [his] songs” from the afterlife. The song ends on a tender, bittersweet final chorus, as he attempts to reach out, even “though [he] cannot speak aloud.” 

Despite some of the more emotional subject matter, this album is also, at its core, incredibly funny, bordering on satirising the sound of the Americana that Amos integrates. The beauty of the fourth song, Watching Heaven Fall, is made to feel all the more earnest and cheesy by the carefree attitudes to God and America he highlights. Soundtracked by a plucky guitar sound and occasional hints of a harmonica in the verses, the song has Amos moving through nonsense imagery of sweat, dreams, eagles and bandits, “laugh[ing] off” the warnings of a “seer on the subway [who] said [he’d] burn in Hell.” Similarly silly and wonderful is the title track, The Singer in My Band, which immediately washes you over with its walking bassline, background vocals and ringing banjo lines. The song tells the tale of a country singer from Texas, who dreams of travelling to “Chicagoland” to meet a lover, “her Evie”, waiting for her. Amos, playing the role of the aspiring country star, begs her to stay and be “the singer in [his] band,” but she simply cannot leave her sweetheart waiting. In a humorous twist of events, then, she places the responsibility of singing onto Amos’ shoulders, leaving him to sing and carry on the country tradition. And as he steps into this new, all-important songwriter role, he can’t help but poke fun at himself, referencing standout Box for Buddy track An Extra Beat for You and Me, interpolating the guitar melody from what is possibly his most emotional song and placing it into a silly tune about wanting to make it big in the country world. It’s a fun sentiment, Amos metaphorically stepping into the singer-songwriter shoes, making fun of them yet excitedly putting them on at the same time, and it’s made all the more enjoyable by the unashamedly country-music quality of its melody. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who, upon listening to this joyful, ridiculous, incredible song, wouldn’t be left grinning from ear to ear.

Even when Amos is at his most serious, grappling with his own status as a songwriter such as on lead single Billy Came Back, his writing is still characterised by its self-aware cheekiness. Billy takes the form of an up-tempo indie rocker based around a twangy guitar riff, singing in an incredibly meta way about a disillusioned country singer who has returned to please his fans. “Without that love, a track is just a track”, he declares over the top of the joyous guitar playing, leaving it unclear whether he’s lamenting or celebrating his role of continuing the singer-songwriter tradition, but he’s triumphantly getting up to perform “in cowboy boots, with all the love he needs” regardless. It’s a fun back-and-forth, the album alternating between this humorous country-star persona and Amos’ beautifully expressive sincerity. 

I came away from The Singer in My Band with an impression of a record that feels concerned with what being a singer-songwriter actually means, expressing its love for the many styles and sounds that Nate Amos has gone through, showing off the past, present and future of who he is as an artist. It’s fitting, then, that the album ends in true singer-songwriter fashion, whispering over an acoustic guitar, Amos’ wry humour peeling away as he offers to “take [a lover’s] loneliness,” and the music gently fades to nothing. Don’t You Cry in Lonesomeness is a beautiful end to the album, taking all of these elements of rock and country, of comedy and sincerity, and synthesising them into what is simply a pretty, classic-sounding song. If my earlier theory that the talented indie-rockers of the world are breathing new life into country music traditions is true, I can’t think of a better project to headline this trend, and can’t wait for whatever This is Lorelei creates next.