“Time is weird,” Mitch Rowland says, speaking for a lot of dads. A few years ago, he was just a shy Midwest guitar dude working at an L.A. pizzeria, washing dishes. Then he met Harry Styles , and suddenly became the wingman to one of the world’s biggest pop stars. These days, he lives out in the English countryside, where he made his superb new indie-folk gem Whistling Pie . He even demoed the songs with his father-in-law at the family farm — in a chicken shed.

But Rowland is right at home moving between musical worlds. Whistling Pie is a homemade album of acoustic ballads, inspired by his hero, the late British folk guitarist Bert Jansch . As on his 2023 debut, Come June , you can hear traces of Nick Drake and Elliott Smith in Rowland’s gentle vocals and delicate guitar. Th

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