Pep Talks

On their third full-length, Pep Talks, quirky Nashville trio Judah & the Lion continue to explore the boundaries laid out on their self-descriptive 2016 breakout, Folk Hop n' Roll. Led by singer/guitarist Judah Akers along with mandolinist Brian Macdonald and banjo player Nate Zuercher, the band emerged out of Belmont University's folk scene in 2012, briefly positioning themselves as a worship band before turning to a particularly vibrant secular approach that mixed soaring indie folk, bluegrass, pop, electronica, and hip-hop. Their sense of uplift and defiance has remained a throughline in each of their releases and is the guiding focus of 2019's Pep Talks. Over 17 pop-heavy tracks, Judah and his crew hit nearly every song hard with a combination of rafter-rattling folk choruses, pounding pop rhythms, emo-tinged raps, myriad confusing flourishes, and an unwaveringly earnest tone that colors each genre they manage to cram into a single track. ~ Timothy Monger