Morgan X Barrie Fall Independent Being a great singer/songwriter is like hitting in baseball; as long as three out of your ten lines are descriptive, innovative, and interesting then you can be considered one of the greats. However, those few [...]
ButchQueen & The Bad Habits Bare Grits Independent Punk music is typically created to inspire either change or chaos. Many punk rockers use the genre’s simple structure and accessibility to send progressive messages with the intent of [...]
Astral Cloud Ashes Dear Absentee Creator Independent Astral Cloud Ashes is the brainchild of Antony Walker and his latest release, entitled Dear Absentee Creator, is a testament to his understanding of melody as well as song structure. Each [...]
Benjamin Dean Wilson The Smartest Person In The Room Independent Songwriters who focus on storytelling have a mountain to climb in every song. To effectively weave a tale writers need descriptive language, effective imagery, and novel concepts. [...]
King Ropes Green Wolverine Independent Most modern rock is inoffensive, for better or for worse. Bands like Wilco, Franz Ferdinand, and Cold War Kids trade the angst of the ’90s and the chauvinism of the ’80s for more introspective [...]
Mark Peters 24 Years Audio Heart Records Each artist who mixes pop, folk, and rock together has their own recipe. John Mayer favors the pop ingredient, Ben Howard’s focus is on being technically proficient in his hybrid folk guitar playing, and [...]
Paul Maged The Glass River Independent It won’t take long for listeners to pick out all of the ingredients in Paul Maged’s latest album, The Glass River. There’s a little bit of Queen, a little bit of Nick Cave, a little bit of Father John [...]
Sam Levin I Am Clarence Productions Sam Levin has an infuriating amount of talent. At 16, he has the vocal range of a singer with decades of experience, he writes melodies which are as catchy as anything on the radio, and he has a clear [...]
Ajay Mathur Little Boat Yakketeeyak Music Every musician has their strengths and weaknesses; this typically dictates what type of music they make. It’s simply human nature; people are unique. Tom Waits will never make a squeaky clean pop song [...]
Prawn Run Topshelf Records Emo is the most difficult genre of music to review. Once you look past the genre’s title which easily carries the most negative connotation in music and the commercial pop music which was sold as “emo” in the early [...]
Queens Of The Stone Age Villains Matador Records Queens of the Stone Age fans rejoice; the boys are back in tow! It has been nearly a four year musical drought for the Palm Desert band and rock n’ roll has become restless in their absence. After [...]
Papa Roach Crooked Teeth Sony Music To be a candidate for worst album of all time, the collection of songs needs to go beyond having lousy music. Anyone can put clashing noises together and make awful tunes, but to be in the running for worst [...]
Current Swell When To Talk And When To Listen Nettwerk Current Swells’ latest release, When To Talk And When To Listen, can be summed up simply with the famous Marlon Brando quote from 1954’s On the Waterfront: “I coulda had class, I coulda been [...]
Willie Nelson God’s Problem Child Legacy Recordings There is nothing worse than musicians using the word “just” in describing their sound. “We’re just a rock band”, “we’re just a blues trio,” or “I’m just a folk singer”, are all summaries [...]
Green Jellö Green Jellö Suxx Livë Blacktop Records Somewhere in the world, at this very moment, a class in modern art is taking place at a major university where a professor stands underneath the projection of a urinal with “R. Mutt” scribbled [...]
Aye Nako Silver Haze Don Giovanni Records The adjectives we use to describe punk typically have a strong affect on the noise. Pop punk, hardcore punk, folk punk, all have a particular sound and a potential listener has some idea of what to [...]
Bill & Joel Plaskett Solidarity New Scotland Yard When attempting to make an album with your father, folk is the best choice of genre. It is one of the only types of music which transcends generations, acting as mankind’s favorite method of [...]
