Before he was the prolific multi-instrumentalist behind dreamcrunch indie rock band Water from Your Eyes; before plastering Bandcamp with dozens of EPs and singles under the name This is Lorelei, Nate Amos grew up listening to folk music. His father, the bluegrass guitarist and songwriter Bob Amos, made sure of that. Those influences are present, if not prominent, in Amos's extensive EP back catalogue. Though a lot of his work from that period can be cleanly lumped under the umbrellas of experimental indie and electronica, the strongly melodic hooks and choruses of songs like "Money Right Now," "Friend" and "One More Song" place them firmly on the already-blurred borders of pop, rock and folk. This is Lorelei's debut LP, 2024's Box for Buddy, Box for Star, played hopscotch with those borders, bleeding country ballads into electronic bops. On his sophomore album, The Singer in My Band, Amos has settled on his roots — at least for now. Appropriately for an album he developed primarily in the car while on tour, Amos calls Singer a "road album." That roaming, beat-era spirit comes through in the simple, driving chord progressions that mark the album's most characteristic tracks. Singer's opening number, for example — the memorably-named "I Will Eat My Heart in the Morning Light" — is a rolling country rambler whose wonderfully scruffy high-string guitar lead sounds like it took a swig of whiskey and stumbled off a Townes Van Zandt record. The song's best couplet sees Amos insisting he's "not looking for some kind of yonder" or "searching for gods in the sky," planting the listener firmly in the red sand of Americana before "Oh No Now My," the album's second single, reels them back into the dense, textured world of pre-Box for Buddy Lorelei. It's unpredictable, unique, and heavy; one of the best songs on the album once you get past its off-beat strangeness, and the clear outlier in style and production ethos. Both despite and because of its incongruity, "Oh No Now My" gives Singer some much-needed tonal contrast and puts the listener on the lookout for Amos's underlying idiosyncrasies in a set of songs which, at least on the surface, come off as strongly traditional. Though Singer is strong with what it has, the album could have benefitted from more of what "Oh No Now My" has to offer. The album's lead single, "Billy Came Back," puts Singer back on the country road with a jangling acoustic lick on the verses and an equally catchy hook backed up by multi-track vocals and a set of subtle but effective synth strings. That's Amos's MO on this album: sparsely produced verses that give way to dense choruses. Toward the end of the record, "The Kid with the Crown" largely abandons that minimalistic production. The song is better for it, with an explosive lead guitar careening over satisfyingly crunchy beds. There's plenty to appreciate about Singer's stripped down aesthetic, but this track is a welcome return to the sound of Box for Buddy's more heavily-produced hits. Though less varied than some of his previous vocal work, Amos's delivery is as affecting as ever, particularly on the title track which features banjo accompaniment from his father alongside some of the album's best lyrics. Lines like, "You can't belong to Texas if you're from Chicago land," evoke the lonely miles and mythic geography of the genre sincerely while still keeping things tongue-in-cheek. Many of Amos's choruses are supported by backing vocals from his sister Sarah, as well as his partner and Water from Your Eyes bandmate Al Nardo. Considering Amos has mostly forgone the vocal transformations that let him sing against himself on songs like Box for Buddy's "Angel's Eye," those higher backing vocals are a welcome change of texture, particularly on "Watching Heaven Fall" — an upbeat bluegrass track featuring a charmingly scratchy fiddle pushed far enough back in the mix to avoid being grating. The chorus of "Sailing (Your Baby's Down)," is another stylistic callback to EP Lorelei, but an electric guitar arpeggio in the vein of Jackson Browne and early Eagles keeps the verses rooted in classic rock. On the instrumental "Nitro," Amos develops the quick-change acoustic style he first showed off on 2021's "My Friend 2," and "Hey Sarah Is It Gonna Rain Forever" takes that idea further, building to a beautifully reverb-laden climax complete with a synth orchestra. Outside of a fun guest verse from Nardo, Singer's penultimate track, "And I Haven't Seen My Love in Quite a While," doesn't bring much new to the record, and "Don't You Cry in Lonesomeness" closes the album out with its most pared-down song: just Amos and an electric guitar. It's strongly written and winds the record down on an appropriately melancholic, if anticlimactic note. The Singer in My Band is Amos's most overt experiment with genre to date. Though it misses most of the patchwork magic that propelled the eclectic electro-folk of Box for Buddy, Box for Star, it's a worthwhile expansion of the modern indie folk and country movements — a reflection of North America filtered through the bent lens of one of its most prolific and particular artists.