New York City–based folk-rocker JBM offers an airy, close-to-the-chest album in Stray Ashes, recorded in isolation in upstate New York. These tracks can be both claustrophobic (“Only Now”) and expansively bucolic (“Winter Ghosts”). With little more than his guitar and his haunting voice (“You Always Keep Around”), JBM serves up vivid depictions of yearning and beauty. This album sees a vulnerable man balanced atop fragile drums and distant guitars (“Thames”), trying to find himself through the majesty of frozen America.