As noted in my first Essentials entry, this is an occasional series in which I spotlight albums that, in my estimation, everyone should experience at least once.)
There’s but three criteria that I use when selecting my “essential” recommendations. They have to be at least five years old; they have to be excellent from start to finish; and they have to be albums that I think everyone should hear, at least once. Why five years? Because, otherwise, many picks would be drawn from my current obsessions, a few of which – as the weeks morph into months – prove to be fleeting. But if it’s something I’ve returned to, time and again, over a period of years… that says something, right there, I think.
That said, Tift Merritt’s recent Stitch of the World is a tremendous effort that will more than likely be in the running for my 2017 Album(s) of the Year selections come December. While we listened to it earlier today, me for probably the 10th time this week, Diane noted that certain songs would’ve been at home on Linda Ronstadt’s Heart Like a Wheel – or, I’d add, Emmylou Harris’ Luxury Liner. I.e., there’s a timelessness about them. And if my hunch about Stitch of the World comes to pass, it won’t be the first time that the North Carolina songbird has flown to the top of my personal charts. In 2012, her heralded Traveling Alone was an honorable mention; and in 2010, thanks to a technical foul of sorts (Rumer’s Seasons of My Soul had yet to be released in the U.S.), she perched at the top with her sublime See You on the Moon, which features such wondrous tunes as “Mixtape,” “Engine to Turn” and “Feel of the World.”
I’ve returned to both albums many times in the years since their releases and, in fact, ranked See You on the Moon as her best work to date for quite some time. Yet, when I choose to listen to something by Tift now, it’s not my first pick – Another Country, my No. 2 for 2008, is that.
Following the release of her previous, Grammy Award-nominated album, Tambourine (2004), she embarked on a world tour that, from what she said in interviews promoting Another Country, left her worn-out. So she took a much-deserved break and relocated to Paris, where she rented an apartment that came with a piano. The result: an album for the ages.
As I wrote back in 2008, “It’s plaintive, yearning and hopeful, often in the same song, and reminds me of everything good from the third Flying Burrito Brothers album, the one when Rick Roberts joined the fold with the majestic ‘Colorado.’ ‘I think I will break/but I mend,’ she sings – like an Americana songbird, I should mention – on the meditative ‘Broken.’”
Another highlight: “Hopes Too High,” which sounds to my ears like an outtake from that Flying Burrito Brothers album…
The piece d’resistance, however, is what may well be the greatest epiphany-set-to-music yet written: “I Know What I’m Looking for Now.”
The Old Grey Cat 
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