Americana

More than baseballs, apple pies, the Route 66 road sign, and the paintings of Norman Rockwell, Americana — that catchall term for the cultural immensity and richness of the United States — has been defined by music. It takes in a broad patchwork of genres, from alternative country to zydeco, all of them linked by a mainline to the North American cultural matrix. It's time to get rootsy, as a wanderin' Johnny Cash sings about epic travels on "Wayfaring Stranger"; Lucinda Williams takes us down the by-ways of rural U.S.A. with "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road"; and Americana granddaddies, the Band, narrate what goes down "Up on Cripple Creek".

The heart of the US opens up, musically, in Next Steps.

Among the most ambitious of the 21st century's Americana stars is Sufjan Stevens, who announced his intention to record a concept album dedicated to each of the 50 U.S. states — the labour of a lifetime. "For the Windows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti," a highlight on 2003's Michigan, features his trademark banjo-based minimalism. Jim James, the prime mover behind Kentucky's My Morning Jacket, hooks up with Arizona's Calexico on "Goin' to Acapulco," which seems to kick up its own fugitive dust-cloud as it heads south, and a stripped-down post-Monkees Michael Nesmith finds his direction with 1972's "Two Different Roads."

Complete your expansive quilt of American sound in Deep Cuts.

These tracks are as diverse as the States themselves — a mixed bag of accents, attitudes and perspectives that holds the mid-California indie groove of Grandaddy ("Everything Beautiful Is Far Away") and the outlaw country blues of Keith Sykes ("Baby Took a Limo to Memphis"). Iris DeMent strips things back to country/folk basics, offsetting her crystalline vocal with a mournful fiddle on "Our Town," Old Crow Medicine Show keeps the old-time spirit alive with "Wagon Wheel," Mary Gauthier spreads the kitchen-sink narrative like treacle on "I Drink," and Rising Sons (featuring Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal) takes us back to the mid-'60s with "2:10 Train."

Americana, musically, is an intoxicating moonshine of folk, country, blues and rock 'n' roll, and it shares a good deal of common ground with the contemporary alt country movement, such is the draw of authenticity and the influence of classic roots artists — so what you're getting here is a fragmented snapshot of alternative North America in all its splendid musical entirety. This is not the landscape seen from the mainstream, but from the back-roads: a musical geography of places rich in local colour, sometimes so different from one another they may as well exist in separate countries. Sure, the list is heavy on acoustic twang and country drawl, but the devil is in the details. Our sonic map covers everyone from Bob Dylan to the Byrds, from Calexico to Whiskeytown. So go on, explore.