Eleanor Underhill and Spaceman Jones & The Motherships release new albums

Just Enough Trouble is the title of Eleanor Underhill’s new album, but the phrase also accurately sums up the Asheville-based artist’s motto in crafting the nine-song collection.

A sonic departure from the polished Americana of Underhill Rose — her long-running project with Molly Rose Reed, in which she sings and plays clawhammer banjo — as well as the layered indie rock of her Eleanor Underhill & Friends project, the LP features “just enough” experimentation and boundary pushing without tipping too far into the unknown.

“I tried to keep it somewhat cohesive in terms of more electronic, more poppy, more fun, more dance-y,” Underhill says. “But there’s always going to be that element of banjo and moodiness and quirkiness that I cannot not do, even if I try.”

Released in mid-November and intended as a tonic for an Asheville community in need of some joy after Tropical Storm Helene, Just Enough Trouble reflects the singer-songwriter’s longtime love of upbeat grooves and her growing skills as a producer. Over the past few years, Underhill has increasingly tinkered with drum machines and synthesizers, creating nearly 40 seeds of songs that she calls “baby plants.” But nurturing those sprouts into musical blossoms proved immensely challenging.

“It was really hard for me to focus in and finish a certain amount. Initially, I was thinking, ‘Let’s just get a single out,’ and that single was ‘Just Enough Trouble,’” she says. “That came out, and people were like, ‘The production’s great, it’s really fun.’ I did a music video for it, and I really felt that extra bit of affirmation from the community to be like, ‘Let’s keep going and wrap up as many more songs as I can.’”

Starting primarily with music and beats, Underhill figured out a track’s feeling before matching it with lyrics that fit the mood. For example, “Feels Like a Party” began with her messing around with various synthesizers, after which she asked local instrumentalist Jacob Rodriguez to duplicate a synth part on saxophone.

“So he re-created that, and then I was like, ‘God, this feels like a party.’ And then I was like, ‘There’s the chorus,’” she says.

Though there’s a decreased emphasis on lyrics across Just Enough Trouble and more significance placed on the overall vibe of the track, that doesn’t mean the results are any less intentional and communicative.

“I was trying to be much more obvious and accessible and pop-friendly with the writing on this album,” Underhill says. “And keep the themes a little more general and less hyperpersonal like some of my other stuff, which might come off as being a little more esoteric and maybe cryptic.”

As with cultivating her production skills in the electro-pop mold, it took Underhill a while to embrace this style of songwriting. She used to think that Talking Heads frontman David Byrne’s approach of finding the rhythm of the lyric, putting in placeholder syllables and then figuring out words that fit was “crazy” and “inauthentic” compared with taking a piece of poetry and setting it to music. But now she’s come around to this mindset.

“After you do it for so many years, you want to switch up how you come at it so that the result is different,” she says. “I don’t want to keep writing the same songs. I’ve already written that one. How do you develop and change and make it fresh for yourself?”

Another new wrinkle with Just Enough Trouble’s creative process was building the tracks with zero thought toward performing them live. Underhill calls that shift “liberating,” and though she has since played “Just Enough Trouble,” “And She Said” and “Visual Design” in her shows, she doesn’t feel the need to include them in her sets because they exist in their fullest form on the album.

“It’s too hard to want to do something creatively and be like, ‘Oh, but I can’t — I don’t know how I’m going to re-create this live.’ So then you’re just second-guessing everything. Just create it the way you want it,” she says. “It’s such a different musical landscape these days. I think there’s a lot of ways we can rethink how we do things.”

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Ahead of their time

The world wasn’t ready for Spaceman Jones & The Motherships’ Forever in a Day.

Originally planned for a February 2022 release, the latest EP from the prolific hip-hop duo of lyricist Davaion “Spaceman Jones” Bristol and producer/vocalist Cliff B. “MOTHER HOOD” Worsham was shelved for nearly three years. But with its Jan. 6 debut, the work is hitting ears at a time when it feels most impactful.

“It was almost a ‘too important to put out now’ type of situation. And then we sat on it so long, it became an ‘if not now, when?’ type of situation,” Worsham says. “We just heralded those songs to a different degree. Not to say that the ones we’ve released [in the interim] were bad or anything. I think our catalog is exceptional, but I think we heralded those songs to some degree a little more than others.”

Over the years, the duo contemplated sharing the six-track collection at various junctures. But after the stark division over the U.S. presidential election on the heels of Tropical Storm Helene’s crippling effects, the music seems more vital than ever.

“I feel like it came out at the right time,” Bristol says. “Everything is pertinent. This is a time where I think we have to have a little bit more of an edge and be a little bit more hard and ready to confront things head on.”

He continues, “We have to be a lot more willing to be confrontational about things that disturb our own peace — the peace of the community and the peace of the world. Because playing nice has got us into the situation where we are now.”

That hard-nosed, direct style makes even more sense once listeners realize much of the EP was created during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when uncertainty reigned supreme and vows for sweeping social reform were brushed off by those who’ve been fed false promises all their lives. These conflicts are most evident on album closer “Ain’t No Killing (Without Killing),” which was written and recorded in the wake of George Floyd’s May 2020 murder.

“Those lyrics [are] still [relevant] to this day because nothing has changed,” Worsham says. “When it comes down to what’s happening in the streets and how they’re treating folks in the street, that song remains the same.”

In discussing the album, Bristol and Worsham keep coming back to the word “raw.” In regard to “Ain’t No Killing (Without Killing),” Bristol enjoys the contrast between Worsham’s fairly poppy production and the raw subject matter, while Worsham ranks Bristol’s lyrics up with “Banks and Collection Plates” as his rawest rhymes from their discography.

But lines like, “If you die on the job, they goi’n clock you out first/And they won’t put a dime toward your funeral and hearse,” from the title track go just as hard. They also echo bars from across the Spaceman Jones & The Motherships catalog that address lower-middle-class, 9-to-5 woes that keep their work feeling bracingly relevant.

As such, Worsham compares Bristol’s lyrics to “reading prophecies,” which is a big reason why Forever in a Day doesn’t sound like it’s been gathering dust or is tied to a particular moment. And the same goes for their unreleased works.

“We’ve probably got three records sitting on the shelf. And some of that stuff’s been sitting there for years — I’m talking way longer than four years,” Worsham says. “And if you put that music on, I guarantee you that it’s just as timeless.”

Since recording Forever in a Day, both artists have lived according to the title’s theme of taking control of your life and putting in the work to achieve your dreams. In addition to producing numerous projects, Worsham returned to his folk/Americana roots, released the critically acclaimed The Cove Ghost in 2024 and recently began recording a follow-up album. Meanwhile, Bristol has grown his Urban Combat Wrestling events into must-see entertainment and launched the Happy Belly Food Truck Co. in late summer 2024.

“You want to have a full life, and we have to change and grow and figure out what we want to do and find a way to make it happen,” Bristol says. “There’s nobody else that’s going to do sh*t for you. And if they do, it’s going to have strings attached.”

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