Esben And The Witch Hold Sacred Nostromo Records There was always a dark streak running through dream pop, with or without shoegaze touches, that made that dream element acquire some nightmarish tones, while still leaving that pop element [...]
Alien Eyelid Bronze Star Tall Texan Records For a band hailing from Texas, it might seem simple to travel in the sometimes clear, sometimes murky waters of roots rock/Americana. Whether those waters go clear or stay murky certainly depends on [...]
Rocky Roberts & Friends Pieces Of Time Wolfe Island Records Being a touring guitar technician for the likes of Wilco, Patti Smith, CSN&Y, Paul Simon, Lucinda Williams and My Morning Jacket can actually make you quite a select group of [...]
Laura Reznek Leap Year Birthday Cake Records These days, the interpretation of what consists of an EP has become quite an elastic thing. It can run from a single (albeit long) song to something that lasts as a full-fledged album for some other [...]
Dex Wolfe Vestiges Independent Back in 2020, we had this to say about Dex Wolfe’s music: “Brief musical notes conjuring all the better sides of David Byrne, Sparklehorse, and Sufjan Stevens work some real polymath magic.” Ok, [...]
Annie Blackman Bug Father/Daughter Records Being vulnerable and introspective is often one of the qualities many listeners look out for in singer songwriters. The problem can be that sometimes such artists go a bit too far in ‘barring the [...]
Scott Matthews Restless Lullabies Shedio Records With any process, there has to be a reverse process. Still, a key question remains there, particularly with music, which is the better one for the artist? In the case of singers songwriters, they [...]
Taj Mahal Savoy Stony Plain Records If there ever was a musical archivist (or a few of them) that actually was able to transfer his knowledge into music, then Taj Mahal is certainly one of those. Like Ry Cooder, his buddy from their early (and [...]
Be-Bop Deluxe Sunburst Finish (Vinyl Reissue) Cherry Red Records Going retrospect and missing the point can be quite harmful for an artist, but getting it right, picking a right artist and/or album to feature, can shed a new light not only on [...]
Easy Star All-Stars Ziggy Stardub Easy Star Records The name of the collective involved in recording this album, a reggae tribute to David Bowie’s legendary album Ziggy Stardust, might include the word easy in its name, but recording a [...]
Rose City Band Garden Party Thrill Jockey Is it really a bad thing that a band or an artist follows in the footsteps of other artists or bands? Of course not, particularly if the music they make is as good as the music of the bands or artists in [...]
Abigail Lapell Stolen Time (Deluxe Edition) Outside Music Exactly a year and a day after its initial release, Abigail Lapell is rereleasing her Stolen Time album, this time as a deluxe edition. So, what has happened to the Toronto [...]
Various Artists Brown Acid: The Sixteenth Trip RidingEasy Records Ok, is there really an answer to this question “will the “Brown Acid” series of compilations, now in its sixteenth edition, ever end?” Well, maybe it is not a [...]
Fur Trader Stuck In The Aching Again Independent How do you keep up the traditional sound of prime singer songwriters of late 60s and early 70s and at the same time present your music with an individual touch that sets you apart? Los Angeles [...]
ferna understudy Independent It is ok to be humble as a musician, particularly if you are just coming up with your debut album. But Belfast, Northern Ireland singer songwriter Hannah McPhillimy, aka ferna, as her debut album understudy shows, [...]
Fruit Bats A River Running To Your Heart Merge Records Fruit Bats and their songwriter Eric D. Johnson have been around for a while, and they have been constantly coming up with some of the more sophisticated, elegant, and often subdued folk [...]
American Grandma Rare Knives Of Light Independent American Grandma and its new album Rare Knives Of Light, is more strong proof that there is slowcore revival going on. Now, don’t just revisit those Codeine or Bark Psychosis albums, [...]
Nico Paulo Nico Paulo Forward Music Group It might be a strange choice for some to exchange the milder climes of Portugal for Newfoundland, but for singer songwriter Nico Paulo, that just might have been the right thing to do to come up with [...]
Hayden Are We Good Arts & Crafts Hayden is definitely one of the more prolific artists out there. After all, it took him some eight years to come up with Are We Good, his latest album. Yet one of the things the Toronto singer-songwriter has [...]
City And Colour The Love Still Held Me Near Dine Alone Records Dallas Green, aka City and Colour has amassed quite a following behind his six albums so far, and his latest, The Love Still Held Me Near, will probably not only confirm that [...]
August Heaven’s Gate Independent Basing your music on philosopher’s ideas can not only be a tricky thing, but very often, quite indulgent and overbearing, and if that philosopher is Georges Bataille, whose main ideas revolve around [...]
Various Artists Cherry Stars Collide Cherry Red Records Actually, the full title of this 4-CD set is Cherry Stars Collide, Dream Pop, Shoegaze & Ethereal Rock 1986-1995. Cherry Red had quite a good reason for such a title, as there is quite [...]
Jerry Leger Latent Uncovers Latent Recordings Jerry Leger has been quietly making a name for himself and for The Cowboy Junkies’ Latent Recordings record label, that has quietly been recently taking on a louder form, deservedly at that. It was [...]
H. Hawkline Milk For Flowers PIAS Somehow, Welsh singer songwriter H. Hawkline (Huw Evans) has been lurking in the shadows, even after five excellent solo albums, being a name known to listeners as a long-time Cate Le Bon collaborator. Well, [...]
