Ilse DeLange
Gravel & Dust
Album · Country · 2019
Dutch listeners have known Ilse DeLange as a sophisticated country-pop singer since the late 1990s, though she’s shifted her style over the years. Those who watched the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014 saw her representing her native Netherlands with The Common Linnets, a quietly intense coed folk-rock group that faintly brought to mind the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss 2007 blockbuster Raising Sand. She enlisted that album’s producer, T Bone Burnett, for her ninth solo album, Gravel & Dust. It’s a work of delicate melodies and dusky moods, and her performances play out breathy dramas over elegant guitar filigree.