ALLISON RUSSELL

FROM Montreal SOUNDS LIKE Multilingual roots music that blends blues and folk rock with gentle country balladry

Onboard a storMy flight in July 2019, Allison Russell thought back to one of the most difficult periods in her life. She’d fled an abusive home at age 15, spending her adolescence roaming the streets, sleeping in graveyards, and playing late-night chess in cafes. “These are the best years of your life,” she wrote, reflecting on the phrase teenagers are so often told. “If I’d believed it, I’d have died.” By the end of the flight, Russell had finished writing a new song for her stunning solo debut LP, Outside Child. The album follows her work as a member of the banjo roots group Our Native Daughters, including 2019’s “Quasheba, Quasheba,” which she wrote in honor of an enslaved ancestor. “My childhood was awful,” Russell, 39, says. “But I have more agency than any of the women in my lineage prior to me. If they could survive, then I have to be able to.”