Susto, Susto Stringband & Holler Choir - Susto Stringband: Volume 1 (2025) [Hi-Res]

Susto Stringband will release their debut album, Susto Stringband: Volume 1, on March 28, 2025 via New West Records. The 9-track set was produced by Ryan Stigmon and recorded at Mitch Easter’s Fidelitorium Recordings in Kernersville, NC. The debut album is a collaborative work between Justin Osborne, frontman of the acclaimed rock outfit Susto, and the Asheville-based Americana band Holler Choir. It features nine of Osborne’s ballads, refrains, and heart wrenching confessions, now drenched in the singular Appalachian sound of Holler Choir’s verdant harmonies and stringed arrangements. Seven Susto staples have been reworked with bluegrass arrangements in Holler Choir’s company alongside 2 new compositions. Osborne’s introspective musings on love, devastating loss, mortality, and transcendence are steeped in the emotive punch of traditional string band sound. Susto Stringband presents an Arcadia like vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature, but with Osborne’s lyrics, there are landmines to dodge and mountains to climb.

Today, American Songwriter premiered the video for the album’s first single, “Friends, Lovers, Ex-Lovers: Whatever.” Osborne said, “I’m so glad we were able to recut this song because it’s been such a staple of the Susto catalog from the beginning. It was written on Valentine’s Day, I believe in 2012. I was making my way through my mid-twenties and navigating life and love and it was originally released on the debut Susto album in 2014. Since then, it has become a fan favorite. I’m grateful that we’ve been able to give the song a new life with this Susto Stringband version and several years later it has come full circle for me, releasing it on Valentine’s Day 2025. Holler Choir’s Clint Roberts said, “I’m very proud of this rendition we were able to bring to life. This song has been a mainstay in the hearts of Susto fans for quite some time, and it’s clear why, given its fundamental message. Justin has captured something universally relatable in it. My goal was to contribute to its timelessness with a string band arrangement that leans more traditional than contemporary, aiming to create something that can’t be pinned to one place or time. I think we managed to do that.”

Justin Osborne has been performing as Susto since 2013 when he formed a collective of fellow musicians and artists in coastal Charleston, South Carolina. Loosely translated from Spanish, “Susto” means “an intense fear understood as a condition of the soul.” In 2022, after some major life shifts, he found himself in Asheville, North Carolina, where at an open mic night, this newcomer to the mountain town was met with the warm embrace of the singular, powerhouse Holler Choir. 2023 saw the release of Susto’s latest album, My Entire Life, which was met with critical acclaim. The following year, Holler Choir released their debut album Songs Before They Write Themselves.