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
. 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