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 [...]
Phantom Handshakes No More Summer Songs Z Tapes It just might be that boundaries are going away, at least, as far as music is concerned. New York duo Matt Sklar and Federica Tassano that work as Phantom Handshakes, have released their second [...]
Nick Hudson Font Of Human Fractures Independent Modern music genres can really be strange constructs. They can be proclaimed on the basis of musical structures, lyrics or just simply the mood they create. Very often though, they overlap, and you [...]
THE PROMISE OF A DISAPPOINTMENT GIRL A CONVERSATION WITH DELYN GREY Musicians often refer back to some dark places and thoughts in their lives and try to turn them into best possible music they can. This is probably one of the toughest artistic [...]
Various Artists Brown Acid: The Twelfth Trip RidingEasy Records How long can these people have this going on? Wasn’t the Brown Acid compilation(s) just a one or a few volumes thing? Or maybe it was a gimmick? Whatever the thing is, [...]
Wax Moon Hello Morning Independent There is always a musical element that presses exactly the right button with every listener. It could be a good guitar lick, a synth line or, say, a string arrangement. For quite a few listeners, it is a set of [...]
Cathal Coughlan Song Of Co-Aklan Dimple Discs If you are able to name one of the cult artists from the Irish music scene, the name of Cathal Coughlan would be probably one of the first to come to mind. The albums he made in the ‘80s and [...]
Kalbells Max Heart NNA Tapes For many fans of what can be called sophisticated pop/rock, a combination of Belle & Sebastian and Stereolab would be a dream come true. An additional accent on harmony vocals and jazzy overtones would definitely [...]
Thorin Loeks In This Place Independent Making travelogues in musical form sounds exactly like something a singer/songwriter should do. You are presenting an outlook on what you see before you while you’re more or less constantly on the [...]
Jason Collett Best Of Arts & Crafts When Broken Social Scene burst on the scene at the turn of the millennium, the band made a huge splash due to the fact that the collective itself had contributions from such a diverse, talented and [...]
Lana Del Rey Chemtrails Over The Country Club Polydor/Interscope There are two things Lana Del Rey doesn’t shy away from. One is saying exactly what she thinks, the other is trying to come up with best music she can. From the moment she [...]
J. Hatfield J. Hatfield Independent Going down the Americana road these days can be quite a rocky trip. After all, there are so many artists trying to combine various musical strands, particularly if roots/country and rock are included. In many [...]
Adam Beattie Somewhere Around The Bend Independent For many, Americana means that such music has to come from the US. Fortunately, that genre has been around for a while and has certainly surpassed the borders of the country where it originated. [...]
Michael Feuerstack Harmonize The Moon Forward Music Group Montreal singer/songwriter Michael Feuerstack has dropped his latest release, Harmonize the Moon. Usually, such records are like food constructed out of simple ingredients. You really [...]
Black Nash Black Nash Ramp Local So, what do you do when you get out of the army after five years? You record an album at home, of course! Well, that is at least what Jody Smith, aka Black Nash has done, and resulting in his self-titled album. [...]
Lydia Luce Dark River Independent Nashville is changing. No, it isn’t the quality of musicianship. Whether you like it or not, the Nashville sound is one of the best around. It is the change that spells diversification, though it could be [...]
Lilys A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns/The 3 Way (Reissues) Sundazed Shoegaze caught on, particularly in the British Isles in the early ‘90s, went down for a while and then returned in the new millennium with full force around the world. Of [...]
Creedence Clearwater Revival Pendulum/Mardi Gras (50th Anniversary Half-Speed Masters) Craft Recordings Creedence Clearwater Revival or CCR, if you will, ruled the airwaves and record players when psych rock was on the rise and prog rock was [...]
