Grace Rogers - Mad Dogs LP

Apologies for the essay… For those that want the short of it - one that’s definitely gonna end up in my best of 2025 list!

Every year there’s a song-based record (for lack of a better term) that comes out of the periphery of my knowledge/listening and totally floors me. I play it to death in the shop til my coworkers tell me to take my copy home where I keep on playing it ad nauseam but not really cos these are the kind of albums that are evergreen (see all past effusive comments about APIE, RD & The Roadhouse Band, Honey2Honey, Rosali, and Sweet Whirl).

Just the other day I was wondering where this year’s album was gonna come from and then a box from Sophomore Lounge landed with Grace Rogers’ record. I feel like it might be too early to call, but also, I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since it turned up.

Her music sounds at once classic and timeless, but also contemporary and strange. When he was in town last month, label head Ryan Davis was telling me about Rogers’ family and personal history within bluegrass music and perhaps this goes some way to explaining it. This isn’t a bluegrass record by any means, but it definitely feels informed by the story telling and rhythmic underpinnings of the genre.

The songs on Mad Dogs cover a hell of a lot of ground, from winding tales of family and local characters, cow-shit pollution, through to songs about working and living in the modern world (a chorus about Instagram without sounding naff!), and the kind of staring in the face of mortality that fans of Ryan Davis will enjoy.

But what sets this aside from “yet-another-singer-songwriter” territory (and that’s no slight on the songs!), is the killer band she’s got on this LP. There’s this odd rhythmic push and pull to the music that speeds up and slows down that kind of reminds me of bluegrass (or maybe I’m imposing this?) or even Neil & Crazy Horse (not to mention the guitar tone!) and beautiful cello lines.
-Mitch

Killer sleeve by Ceirra Evans