ANGELA AUTUMN - BELIEVER (VIOLET COLOURED) VINYL

Angela Autumn has always been drawn to the mountains. Raised in the Appalachian region of western Pennsylvania, she channels that landscape in her voice, funneling the timeless influence of mountain streams and rolling foothills into her genre-bending folksongs.

With her second album, Believer, she proves she's every bit as interested in the modern age as tradition. Released on the heels of support tours with Bonny Light Horseman, Langhorne Slim, and others, Believer is a musical melting pot of a record, blending the mountain music of Autumn's past with the hybridized sounds — indie, psychedelia, pop, and gothic country — of her present. Audiences still call her "The Rose of Appalachia," a nickname that nods to the Allegheny roots and clawhammer banjo skills that helped her blossom into a critically-beloved solo artist. Believer showcases the other flowers in her garden, though, capturing Autumn in full bloom.

"I wanted to merge different aspects of myself," she says of the album, which follows releases like her full-length debut, Frontiers Woman, and the 2023 EP Cowboy Jack Clementine. "A lot of my friends are dancers, strippers, and body workers, and I like making music they can move their body to. With Believer, I wanted to make something with more attitude."

To find that attitude, she headed back to her old stomping grounds: the great outdoors. Autumn spent time in the Tennessee woods. She booked a weekend in a rural treehouse outside of Asheville. She spent time at her friend's warehouse in Chattanooga, sleeping on the concrete floor at night and writing music during the day. Steadily, an album's worth of material began to take shape. "I like to put myself in extreme situations in order to write," she explains. "That's how I wrote songs like 'Jesus Heist' and 'In the South': by leaving everything behind and going into nature. Without the earth, I probably wouldn't have any music."