Devon Gilfillian

Time Will Tell is the album Devon Gilfillian has been preparing to make his entire life. But some things needed to happen first—his life needed to change, the road to wind through a few curves and over a few bumps—before the classically modern and magnetic soul singer could write these songs. He needed to confront his family’s mortality. He needed to endure a relationship whose cracks nearly broke him. He needed to take control of the way he made his records.

You should first know that Devon’s father, Nelson Gilfillian, likes to keep it clean. A father of three now at the edge of 70, he hits the gym five times a week and generally watches what he eats. Though he raised his kids just west of Philadelphia, he now lives east of Nashville in the rural outskirts of Lebanon. A lifelong musician and wedding singer, Nelson plays congas in a weekly R&B and jazz jam at the Flamingo Cocktail Club.

Devon was stunned and confused when his mom called in September 2023 to say that Nelson, then 67, had suffered a heart attack. His own father had died at that age, but Nelson’s prognosis seemed better—stints and back home to Lebanon. Nelson is the reason Devon is a musician, so the son did what he assumed his father would want: he walked onstage in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, played his show, and flew home the next morning.

In a matter of weeks Gilfillian wrote “Glad to Be Here,” a bittersweet ode to existence and to slowing down long enough to remember what a gift it is to be alive. “Glad to Be Here” is the aching, grateful country-soul centerpiece of Time Will Tell, his fourth album and an account of the extreme highs and lows that come with living.

Nelson’s health scare coincided with the protracted, painful end of a long relationship Gilfillian steadily realized was making him worse. The dozen songs of Time Will Tell document the work it took to reach the end of that road—and then the sense of liberation and burgeoning joy he has found at the start of a new one. The album does what classic soul and country records often do best: share the troubled state of someone’s heart in exquisite detail and look for a way forward.

Not long after Gilfillian moved to Nashville a dozen years ago, he wrote “Home,” a song for his mom, Ginny. It was the first tune he felt comfortable sharing—a breakthrough that made him see songwriting and singing as therapy. That sensibility was clear on his first three albums, especially the ecstatic eruptions of 2023’s Love You Anyway. Even his 2020 full-length, friend-studded cover of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On felt personal, like he was looking for a sanctuary of his own in song.

As he struggled to save a relationship, Gilfillian found himself writing about differences he recognized as irreconcilable. He mourned lifestyle distance with “Moonflower,” a neo-soul song about respecting but regretting what makes someone themselves. On “Black Dog Rabbit Hole,” he takes frank stock of the impact that tension had on his wellbeing, using his own depression and addiction as an escape hatch. These are not just breakup songs but exacting maps of his inner conflicts as he tries to find ways to be happy—ways of being, like his father, simply glad to be here.

Gilfillian and his longtime drummer Jonathan Smalt decided to cut the songs quickly to capture their feelings. They asked Dave Cobb if they could use Nashville’s RCA Studio A, and recruited engineers and producers Reid Leslie, Michael Harris, and Ran Jackson to help with varispeed tape machines and key calls. They built a band of session players and tracked most vocals in single takes. Neal H Pogue later joined as executive producer and mixed the album himself. Everyone wanted the recordings to reflect the realness of the circumstances in which the songs were written.

It absolutely worked. “Black Dog Rabbit Hole” is a riveting hard-rock snapshot of mania, Gilfillian’s voice switching between falsetto frailty and a tormented bellow. With gospel surges, ringing bells, and jittery guitars, “Hold On (Hourglass)” races like a nervous heart. On “IRL,” a boom-bap beat and an organ’s psychedelic whirr give way to a funk strut as he wrestles with leaving and staying. Gilfillian ends Time Will Tell not with an apology but with a permission slip: “You Can Hate Me Now” acknowledges how hard endings are while embracing vulnerability. “We just gotta go through,” he sings.

For Jon Muq, a singer-songwriter born in Uganda and now living in Austin, Texas, music is part of a larger conversation with the world. Drawing from African and Western musical traditions, he devises songs as small gifts meant to settle into everyday life and provoke reflection and resilience. “These days the world is sad,” he explains, “so I wanted to make happy songs. I wanted to write songs that connected with the listener in a very personal way. When someone listens to my music, it’s not just about me and what I’m singing. It’s about how they understand the songs individually.”

Muq’s experiences growing up in Uganda and living in America give him a unique perspective. “I grew up in a very different life, where so many people pass through hard times just because they don’t have much. Our biggest issue was food scarcity. Then I came to a different world, which gave me a picture of how to write a song that can find balance with everyone wherever they are, whether they have a lot or not much.” His debut album with producer Dan Auerbach was released May 31st, and his touring history includes shows with Billy Joel, Norah Jones, Mavis Staples, Amythyst Kiah, Corinne Bailey Rae, and others.