It’s no knock on SUSS ’s excellent music to admire the strategy behind their success. Their first savvy move was to embrace the kind of pat labeling that many artists try to avoid. Self-branding as “ambient country,” they made the tradition of diffusing American roots music through a new-age filter sound sexy and modern and algorithmic. They played to the playlists and got results, and were branded as pioneers in the process SUSS expanded their brand under the rubric Across the Horizon , which consists of a podcast; a compilation series featuring fellow travelers like Mark Nelson of Pan American , William Tyler , Marisa Anderson , and Chuck Johnson ; and now a revolving all-star jam at the Big Ears Festival , a booking that’d be a feather in any upscale experimental musician’s cap (and an intuitive pairing of artist and venue that I called back in 2022 ). No score yet, be the first to add. It helps that, all being at least 60, SUSS have well over a century’s worth of combined industry experience.…