A San Franciscan now calling Tennessee home, Nicki Bluhm possesses a modern, clear-eyed perspective that grabs the heart and keeps you holding on to every word. Releasing in June of 2022, her new album Avondale Drive is a masterful exploration of what it means to be fully yourself, rather than a vessel for the expectations of others. “This album is a lot about building trust back in myself. Finding my own inner compass and aligning it to my authentic self,” she says. Recorded in East Nashville with producer Jesse Noah Wilson, and featuring Oliver Wood, Erin Rae, A.J. Croce, Jay Bellerose, and others, Avondale Drive combines nostalgic country-rock with distinctly modern, sharp lyricism—an apt contrast for the process of studying one’s past in order to make a better future. Avondale Drive is reminiscent of the beginnings and endings described in Bluhm’s previous album, but there is a distinctly new, mature perspective. Says Bluhm, “At the end of a relationship, sometimes the truth is the only scrap of kindness we have left to offer. [It all] goes back to the overarching theme of trusting yourself, trusting the universe and trusting it’ll all work out as it should. Calling off the war with what IS.”