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, [...]
Willie Nelson I Don’t Know A Thing About Love Legacy Recordings Some artists can only do a good job with their own songs. Others work much better when they interpret somebody else’s material. Yet, when you have a true legend like [...]
Neutral Milk Hotel The Collected Works Of Neutral Milk Hotel Merge Records There is always an exception to the rule. Whether that exception proves the rule is besides the point here, because that exception here is a cherished one, not the one to [...]
Nicholas Merz American Classic Independent If you haven’t encountered Seattle singer-songwriter Nicholas Merz before, either with his band Darto or solo, American Classic, the title of his third chapter of The Duvall Sound, as he calls it, [...]
Gabrielle Shonk Across The Room Arts & Crafts Some record labels just have a great sense what fits into their artist roster and what level of music quality passes the muster. That’s a sure way to make as few misses as possible, if any. [...]
John Lee Hooker Burnin’ (60th Anniversary Reissue) Craft Recordings For all rock and other modern music fans it is good to know, if they don’t already, that 80% of the stuff they hear or listen to today is based on what this legend [...]
Laure Briard Ne Pas Trop Rester Bleue Midnight Special Records Usually, when record labels sign a new artist, they come out with some serious hype, comparing the new artists to some big, or cult names to boot. So, when signing singer songwriter [...]
MF Tomlinson We Are Still Wild Horses PRAH Recordings Working within the psych rock and psych folk genres these days means that as an artist you actually have to digest as many other genres as possible you can and include them within either (or [...]
The Brian Jonestown Massacre The Future Is Your Past A Recordings When you are releasing your 20th album, you are practically becoming an institution. Maybe Anton Newcombe, The Brian Jonestown Massacre main man is not exactly somebody who likes [...]
Pearla Oh Glistening Onion, The Nighttime Is Coming Spacebomb Records If Oh Glistening Onion, The Nighttime Is Coming, as an album title sounds like a far-fetched psychedelic dream, then you probably aren’t much far off. That is exactly [...]
Ships In The Night Asleep In Midwinter Independent Ships In The Night, aka Alethea Leventhal is no stranger to Spill Magazine, but there are some compelling musical reasons for that. One more reason for her latest, albeit brief EP Asleep in [...]
Mmeadows Light Moves Around You Independent On paper, the combination of Kristin Slipp and Cole Kamen-Green, aka Mmeadows, can sound like a strange combination. After all, Slipp is a member of avant-garde pop band Dirty Projectors, and Green has [...]
Will Epstein Wendy Fat Possum Records A casual listen to Wendy, the new album by Woodstock, NY’s Will Epstein, might make one fall into the trap of labeling this album and Epstein with the standard tag of singer songwriter. Yet, as the album [...]
Robert Forster The Candle And The Flame Tapete Records The Go-Betweens, in both the band’s incarnations, were probably one of the best rock bands ever. That greatness was based on the songwriting and friendship dynamic between Robert [...]
H.C. McEntire Every Acre Merge Records Durham, North Carolina might not exactly be a renowned music center, but that there is quite a good chance that singer-songwriter H.C. McEntire and her latest release, Every Acre, might give that city a [...]
Kevin Morby Music From Montana Story Dead Oceans If there’s an artist who can come up with a soundtrack for a neo-Western film today, Kevin Morby might not be the usual choice, but just might be a great one. Scott McGehee and David Siegel [...]
Benji Tranter Songs To Make You Happy Pear O’Legs Records Currently, it seems that bedroom pop as a specific genre started to include so many things, with one constant – excellent melody lines. If you accept such a definition, then [...]
Siv Jakobsen Gardening The Nordic Mellow Norwegian singer songwriter Siv Jakobsen seems to love touring, as she spent most of her career so far on the road. Having that in mind, one would think that she shies away from the studio, or that is the [...]
