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 [...]
Various Artists Almost Famous Soundtrack (Expanded Uber Box Set) Universal Music Involving personal experience and emotions in art can be quite a tricky proposition. You either fail miserably or you come up with something that has a timeless [...]
Cots Disturbing Body Boiled Records How many Canadian artists do you know that spent time as bookkeepers in Brazil? If the answer is none, then here’s one — Steph Yates, who also goes by the name of Cots, and who just came up with a [...]
1st Base Runner Seven Years Of Silence Universal There are two ways you can approach music in dark times like these. One is to make music as dark or even darker. The other is to do completely the opposite and come up with some light, fluffy [...]
David Crosby For Free BMG Sometime this August, David Crosby will turn 80. He has practically been around throughout the entire history of rock music in all its forms. That, along with working solo, working with such iconic bands as The Byrds, [...]
Dallas Burrow Dallas Burrow Independent For some, the cowboy hat Dallas Burrow is wearing on his second, self-titled album might be the only reason to skip on it. For others, it might be exactly the reason to pick it up. In both cases, they [...]
John R. Miller Depreciated Rounder Records Yet another Americana/alt country album you would say? Maybe. That is a remark that you can encounter from anyone that isn’t too keen on the genre and takes only a cursory listen to Depreciated, [...]
Bryan Away Canyons To Sawdust Independent There are so many sounds around that have been dubbed as Baroque pop, that quite a few of those actually have no connection with either Baroque or pop. The phrase that was coined back in the second part [...]
Raymans Welcome To Gerrard Square Independent I guess it would have been a legal hassle to use anything connected with Rayman, the Ubisoft video game character, for your fledgling band. Just a few guys hanging on the street on a sunny day will [...]
Michael Cormier More Light!! Dear Life Records How do you survive in a music world as an artist these days? Unless you are a big name (and even then, it could be a problem), you have to take on a few musical roles, and then, that might not be [...]
Rose City Band Earth Trip Thrill Jockey Every discerning fan of modern-day psychedelia has encountered the name of guitarist Ripley Johnson. You see, Johnson is one of the driving forces behind some really accomplished psych that has come our [...]
Mike Gale Twin Spirit Baboo Records Who can you call the UK version of a combination of Robert Pollard and R. Stevie Moore? Could be a hard choice to make, but here’s one proposal — Southampton’s Mike Gale. Not only is Gale as [...]
Six Organs Of Admittance The Veiled Sea Three Lobed Recordings Ben Chasny, or Six Organs of Admittance is one of those artists to whom you can attach only one label — expect the unexpected. Throughout his quite illustrious career [...]
Liz Phair Soberish Chrysalis Records There are quite a few scenarios about what happens when your first record is proclaimed (and actually is) a true classic. Most of them are not so good for the artist in question. And Liz Phair could be a [...]
Mercury Rev Snowflake Midnight (Deluxe Edition) Cherry Red Records Let’s put things straight where Mercury Rev is concerned: they are a prog rock band. However, instead of being part of the much-maligned branch of prog rock that deservedly [...]
Robert Finley Sharecropper’s Son Easy Eye Sound There’s something about what some call ‘old-fashioned’ soul/blues/roots combo that just hits you right away and doesn’t let you go as long as the sounds come out. Just [...]
Violent Femmes Add It Up (1981-1993) (Reissue) Craft Recordings It is now 40 years on since Gordon Gano and his crew brought us their souped-up, brilliant musical vision of post-punk/new wave/whatever on mostly acoustic instruments. Some put [...]
Great Lake Swimmers Live At The Redeemer 2007 Weewerk Recordings Some of the (somewhat older) readers might remember the good ole commercial for Memorex cassette tapes: “Is it live, or is it Memorex?”. For some (good) reason, that is [...]
Sara Bug Sara Bug Egghunt Records For quite a while now, you can simply label anything coming out of Nashville as country music, or even Americana. Still, those listeners who cringe at any mention of music out of that city tend to mention [...]
