Ships In The Night Latent Powers Cleopatra Records Are the current times perfectly suited for some synth-based darkwave that skids along between ambient lullabies and nightmares that stick somewhere in your mind? If your answer to that question [...]
Abby Huston AH HA Egghunt Records Richmond, VA producer/songwriter Abby Huston just came up with the AH HA, a genre-bending pop album that is a promise in itself. Huston wraps their somewhat moody lyrics into seemingly sweet and gentle melodies [...]
GLENN ECHO FIXED MEMORY INDEPENDENT Six years to come up with a debut album? You either had a hard time making your music, or you are painstakingly taking your time, taking a hard look (and listen) to every chord in your music and word in your [...]
Grant Pavol Reflections Accidental Popstar Records The psych-folk label these days has been stamped on almost anything that falls out of the ‘regular’ mellower or singer songwriter music as very defined genres. Based on his three [...]
Louise Aubrie Antonio Carrot Bone Records If you think that the cover of Louise Aubrie’s fifth album Antonio looks like the cover of Pet Shop Boys’ album Actually, you’d be perfectly right. That is exactly what Aubrey is paying [...]
Reb Fountain IRIS Flying Nun For decades now, it has become quite a common occurrence that an artist from New Zealand comes up with the musical goods. From Split Enz, across The Chills and The Clean to most currently Lorde, Aldous Harding and [...]
John Southworth Rialto Tin Angel Records For some 20 odd years or so, from his opening salvo Mars’ Pennsylvania John Southworth has so far never made anything that would be less than very good. And since his last three albums-only efforts [...]
Erin Alissa Restless Independent Finding your place among notable singer songwriters working within the Americana/country pop genre can get harder day by day, particularly when artists like Kasey Musgraves have set the standard bar so high. You [...]
Cashavelly Morrison Metamorphosis Independent Artists often have a hit and miss affairs when they name their releases. Very few hit a title that truly explains the music contained in the grooves, or stream bits, if you will. In a way, North [...]
Ducks Ltd. Modern Fiction Royal Mountain Records Ducks Ltd., or Toronto duo Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis, seem to be connecting dots across the globe with their latest album Modern Fiction, from Toronto, to Bristol, and from England to Dunedin, [...]
Mac McCaughan The Sound Of Yourself Merge Records Knowing that Mac McCaughan has been the front man for both Superchunk and Portastatic, what kind of sound would you expect to her from his latest solo effort, The Sound of Yourself? Well, if you [...]
Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection Full Time Hobby If the last name Cullum rings a bell, to the disappointment of many, or to the delight of equally large group of listeners, this is another Englishman, [...]
Ryan James Brewer Tender Amphion Recordings How do you combine sunny, sunshine SoCal pop vibe, with something so serious as suicide and depression among musicians and artists in general? Even though something like that might sound as completely [...]
Lizzie Loveless You Don’t Know Egghunt Records It is a long way from Halifax, NS to New York City. Whatever Lizzie Lieberson picked up on her way from her hometown beyond her nom de plume of Lizzie Loveless down seems to have worked [...]
Matthew Fowler The Grief We Gave Our Mother Signature Sounds For each and every artist that goes the singer songwriter route, there is always one, almost gigantic hurdle they have to jump over. That hurdle is at the same time a very complex one. [...]
The Bevis Frond Little Eden Fire Records Many listeners who are not so familiar with Nick Saloman, aka The Bevis Frond, may wonder why he has such a staunch and unwavering following, whatever the size of that following is. The answer might be [...]
Saint Etienne I’ve Been Trying To Tell You Heavenly Recordings If you’ve ever taken Saint Etienne at face value, a very good electro pop band, you would be greatly mistaken. Behind every one of their releases, the trio has always had an [...]
Nico Hedley Painterly Whatever’s Clever Records How do you combine the countrified ramblings of one George Jones and wide excursions everywhere, particularly into jazzy plains of one and only Destroyer? If that is a question you need [...]
The Northern Belle The Women In Me Die With Your Boots On Records Well, along with Americana, we’ve certainly got Canadiana, and a few other -ianas, to which we can certainly add Nordicana, as there is definitely a take on North [...]
Opus Orange Object Lessons Emoto Music Opus Orange is one Paul Bessenbacher and the ‘indie-rock’ Santa Monica, CA collective gathered around his ideas. That indie-rock categorization these days is usually something that denotes [...]
Chris Roberts Lost And Found Independent Many listeners shy away from artists that seemingly work with a set-out formula connected with any given musical genre. Just by sticking to the formula doesn’t get you very far, particularly in the [...]
Dakota Jones Black Light Lord Please Records When you love old-fashioned blues and soul and want to refresh them for the tastes that are prevalent today, you really have a problem ahead of you. You want to keep ‘that old stuff’ in [...]
The Furious Seasons Home All Day, Home All Night Stonegarden Records David Steinhart has been one of the stalwarts of the Los Angeles indie folk scene since the 80s, either solo or as a member of Pop Art, Smart Brown Handbag, and now The Furious [...]
Magnum Dopus Suburbanova Independent How do you characterize a rock music genre that goes under the title of goth, and where does it stem from? Of course, many would point to the 80s and bands that stemmed from the almighty New Wave, anybody [...]