Best New Album

Singer/songwriter Amy Ray began exploring self-image and social injustice with her bittersweet folk duo Indigo Girls. She continued with her first rebellious rock solo album, Stag, which featured a wealth of guest backup artists as she searched for stylistic footing along a gnarled backbone of rootsy bristle. But with her sophomore full-length, PROM, Ray’s grown past her own awkward phase and sounds utterly confident in her songwriting and identity, delivering vignettes of surging struggle both melodic and crunchy, wrenching yet assuring.
www.daemonrecords.com/amy/.