Watch “Ambient Country” Trio SUSS Perform on KEXP

Although I’d heard their music in preceding years, I truly became aware of “ambient country” trio SUSS with 2020’s Promise, a lush album that provided a bit of solace during the COVID pandemic. As I wrote in my review:

Now that so many of us are working and schooling from home, unable to socialize with friends and loved ones as much as we’d like, we all know the feeling of being trapped, cooped up, and unable to go anywhere. Which is where an album like Promise, its songs full of wide-open spaces untainted by pandemic, can serve as a welcome release and respite.

The fellas in SUSS — Bob Holmes, Pat Irwin, and Jonathan Gregg — went into the KEXP studios this past August to perform a short set of their music, and it was finally posted on YouTube earlier this week. Kudos to audio engineer Jon Roberts, because their performance sounds amazing, and captures the trio’s sound in all of its glory (especially Gregg’s gorgeous pedal steel tones).

The trio perform six songs spanning their catalog, followed by a short interview with Alex Ruder about the band’s origins, the “ambient country” genre — which exists in that liminal space between Brian Eno and Ennio Morricone — and the “Ambient Country” podcast.

SUSS’ latest album, Birds & Beasts, was released this past June by Northern Spy Records.