Kimmi Bitter's album Bittersweet leans harder into sixties countrypolitan and surf

Kimmi Bitter released Bittersweet, a record that goes further into the mod, countrypolitan and surf guitar sound she built her name on rather than away from it. Saving Country Music reviewed it on 21 August 2026 and scored it 8.2 out of 10, filing it under countrypolitan, classic California country and surf guitar-inspired country on the site's own classification system.

The comparison the review keeps returning to is a voice like Patsy Cline attached to a band that plays like The Ventures. Bitter, who works out of San Diego, stunned with Old School in 2024, a record that earned a nomination for the site's Album of the Year. The follow-up does not hedge. It doubles down on the same era.

The review argues the voice is the whole entrance. In an earlier era, it says, a natural instrument like that would have had a label marshalling every resource behind it, and the fact that it does not now says more about the industry than about her. Singers who lean on technology get rewarded handsomely, the piece contends, while singers who put artistic integrity first find a steeper road in front of them.

The case starts with the first song. Love Me Or Leave Me Alone is assembled out of sixties countrypolitan: strings, orchestral movement, a simple sentiment made enormous by the arrangement around it. The review says the chill from it outlasts the last note by some distance.

Michael Gurley produced the album and co-wrote it, and the review credits him with purging the anachronisms. Every detail is scrutinised so nothing punctures the dream, from the chorus singers to the steel guitar to a harmonica on Over You that the reviewer did not see coming and welcomed anyway. The word it keeps using for the result is intentional, and it is emphatic that intentional here does not mean sterile.

The thing the review says it did not expect is Willis Farnsworth. He is Bitter's guitar player and her partner, an ace anyone who has seen her live already knew about, and on this record he is turned loose. His vintage licks and tones run through most of the album, and he takes two instrumentals of his own: Trail of Dreams and Bigsby Burnout.

What the review admires in those two is what he does not play. Farnsworth holds back rather than showboating, which keeps the tracks inside the era the record is set in and makes them more impressive for leaning on taste and tone alone. The comparison offered is Booker T and the MG's. It also opens the album to an audience beyond the usual one, meaning vintage guitar obsessives and surf fans.

The complaints are real and small. A couple of songs edge toward fuddy duddy, the review says, and it wishes the writing went deeper in places and let Bitter's voice climb more often instead of staying inside the throwback. Against that it sets the musicianship, the exploration of tone and a voice it calls one of a kind, and concludes that the record defies the usual arguments about taste and genre.

The line it lands on is Patsy Cline and Dick Dale taking a Woody to the beach for a luau with Nokie Edwards and Merle Travis. That is a specific enough joke to work as a description. Bittersweet sits with the rest of the country records we are following in the release calendar, in a season that also brought Kaitlin Butts setting Hello, Honky Tonk for October and Honky Tonk Fest naming its 2026 bill for a November date near Austin.