I made this note on my phone while watching Cut Throat Finches launch into their performance at The Post the other night: Frontman Sean Russell “might be reaching back into his folk era, but they all still play like they’re putting on a rock show.”
The band, currently a seven-piece, was spread across the stage in celebration of their new album, High Horses, making its debut that night as a vinyl record. The band’s joy was electric and infectious, and everyone in the crowd looked like they were having the time of their lives.
It’s not as though CTF shows had turned into downers, but their previous record, Unraveled, was written in 2020, and, according to the interview I did with Russell for that album’s release in 2024, it was about people trying to make something beautiful despite all the turmoil and personal rough patches that each bandmember was going through. The result was an uncharacteristically cynical Cut Throat Finches album, though its darkness was buoyed by the sunny jangle of the band’s Brit-pop influences and Russell’s ear for big choruses. The musicians needed to work out their demons, and they made a really great album about that.
Russell is a prolific songwriter, and perhaps to put some distance between him and the emotionally confrontational experience of making Unraveled, he started working on new material even before that album debuted. Between 2022 and 2025, he crafted another set of songs, this time mostly by himself. Since their inception in 2015, Cut Throat Finches’ sound has evolved from a folk-forward take on Americana to one that gave more voice to synths and electric guitars. The new songs he was writing were more in line with the band’s original sound.
Photo by Rob Chickering
“This is definitely a more personal album,” Russell wrote in a text conversation with me. “It gets back to my singer-songwriter roots. … Honestly, it was going to be a solo album because I wanted to intentionally steer away from what I had written in the past and urged [multi-instrumentalist and producer] Taylor Tatsch to push back and confine ideas/arrangements and structures that are squarely in the indie folk/alt-country realm.”
Ultimately, the realities of promoting an album made themselves apparent, though, and releasing his new songs as Cut Throat Finches’ fifth album felt like the right move. “When I finished recording and bookings were building up for 2026, I realized I would be starting from scratch from a marketing standpoint, and almost every festival or big stage opportunity wanted to book through Cut Throat Finches, so it was a decision of convenience, really, and [the] limited time and resources [needed] to shift back to solo-artist work.”
Russell said the original lineup of the band — Tatsch on guitar, Eric Webb on keys, Rob Paine on bass, and Draya Ruse on drums — all have projects with other people, and so CTF live shows now have a rotating cast of musicians. “Cut Throat Finches have become a band centered around my schedule, quite honestly, so I reached out to one of 12 people now versed on the set and music to play any given show or opportunity that comes our way.”
While Ruse, Paine, and Tatsch are still in the band, the show at The Post featured Rowdy Carter (Arenda Light, Guttersluts) on electric guitar, Tamara Cauble (Telegraph Canyon, Clint Niosi) on fiddle, Steve Hammond (Chet Stevens, Matt Tedder) on keyboards, Jeremy Hull (Holy Moly), on bass, multi-instrumentalist Ryan Mauritz on pedal steel, and Nick Tittle (Claire Hinkle, Arenda Light, Guttersluts) on drums, with Kasey Dixon joining the crew on cello.
“On any given night, these and a few others might be available and in the lineup,” Russell said. “This gives me an opportunity to really stretch the songs and make the setlist new, hopefully something that people will appreciate.”
Thematically, High Horses songs deal with personal reflection. “In ‘San Antone,’ which is my song about getting arrested, I’m finally paying for years of bad choices.”
“American Subway Blues,” which Russell wrote in Boston, is “expressing the feeling of not feeling like you know your place in the world … [and] ‘Last Call Shooter’ talks about The Basement Bar, but it is a self-deprecating take after one of my many late nights at The Boiled Owl ordering up a round of shots at 1:55.”
Russell has always been introspective and self-interrogating. He’s always been upfront about his relationship with alcohol, as well as the struggle to reconcile the faith he was raised on with the way religion is used by people with agendas. He is also an Army veteran, and in 2024, he connected with a veterans songwriting group called Operation Encore.
Photo by Rob Chickering
“Honestly, I had never looked back at my time in the army as a source for material, and I, luckily, was never deployed in combat,” Russell said. “However, once I connected with other veterans who are struggling at various levels and had given up the better part of their youth in multiple combat deployments, I finally felt like I wanted to say something for them, which is why I wrote [High Horses’] ‘Unsettled Minds.’ I would say that it wasn’t my time in the army that influenced my songwriting but more the time with the vets. [That and] having found something that I might be able to offer them as they find their place back home, which is often a jump off a steep cliff for many,” adding that after leaving the army, “I found a community right away through music that I desperately needed.”
On High Horses, it seems like Russell is looking back to his beginnings as a musician. I asked him if it felt like a reset for the band he’s been leading for over a decade. “I’ve been asking myself the same question. My main purpose with this album was to steer CTF into a sound that feels more like home, like it comes from [Fort Worth], and so that people can hear that I’m proud of this [city]. What I write musically has been influenced by what I grew up listening to, and I did plan to release this as a solo album.
“Still, Cut Throat Finches is always going to sound like its own thing, even if it now includes twice as many members, some of whom play strings. Cut Throat Finches is a Fort Worth band, and even with [Cauble] on fiddle, I realize the shift [in sound] from previous albums to High Horses is not that big. … The difference in how people relate to it now is much more in line with where I want to be [as a songwriter]. When I went to record with [Tatsch] down at AudioStyles Studio [in Fredericksburg], I asked him to intentionally steer me out of the guitar-driven big-rock sound I had always gone to, and I am extremely happy with the results.”
Whether Russell’s songs get bolstered by a guitar or a fiddle, they’re still big, hooky, and hopeful. The boisterous crowd that packed The Post for the High Horses release show was a testament to that.
