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In her first release in nearly ten years, North Carolina singer-songwriter Tift Merritt picks up right where she left off with the sweetness of Sugar.

Working with producer Lawrence Rothman (Amanda Shires, Lucinda Williams, Margo Price), the album is an expansive exploration of love. Not through classic love songs, but by considering how searching for love, and receiving or not receiving it shapes our world.

Merritt approaches the subject with warmth, grace, and a naked honesty, like when she sings "I've got nothing urgent but your mouth" on the terrific opener "Finest Feelings" or the joy she finds in the "Everyday Singing" of mothers and daughters.

Rothman and a talented group of Nashville musicians like Erick Slick (Dr. Dog), McKenzie Smith (Midlake), Audley Freed (Allison Krauss) and Robert Ellis bring the songs to life with a freewheeling Americana sound that matches Merritt's questing songwriting.

In a press release the singer described the album like this. “Sugar is about the surprising sweetness of being unequipped for showing up every day but trying anyway.”

I don't know about you, but that sentiment hits so hard for me. -Malachy Koons

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