Archive: 2017

Following his 2015 psychedelic masterpiece Hey Joe Opus/Red Meat, the new album from visionary roots music songwriter and bandleader Otis Taylor, Fantasizing About Being Black, is a stark and poetic lesson on the historical trauma of the African American experience, from the voyages of slave ships to the Mississippi Delta. Taylor simultaneously travels back in […]

Hailed by No Depression as “one of the most talented acts making music today,” North Carolina-based duo Mandolin Orange—Emily Frantz (fiddle/vocals) and Andrew Marlin (mandolin/vocals)—announce spring tour dates in support of their critically acclaimed album, Blindfaller. The tour includes notable appearances at Merlefest, Red Rocks, Bonnaroo, Forecastle, and Pickathon. A full list of dates is […]

Plus, Netflix’s latest looks like another winner.

Conor Oberst will release a new album, Salutations, on Nonesuch Records, on March 17, 2017. The album is a companion piece to 2016’s lauded Ruminations. When Oberst wrote and recorded the songs on Ruminations, entirely solo – with just voice, piano, guitar and harmonica – he intended to ultimately record them with a full band. In the midst of putting together […]

“I have very eclectic musical taste, so I draw from all areas of music as well as everything else I come across in my daily life,” says John Bigham; “JB” – as he’s known to friends on his latest album as The Soul of John Black. His new eclectic mix of blues, soul, jazz and funk […]

Sprawling Minnesota ensemble Romantica have spent the last seven years on hiatus following a dispute with their former label. Fronted by Irish-born singer-songwriter Ben Kyle, the group has nurtured a cult following with their heartfelt and melodic alt-country. On February 10th Romantica make a triumphant return with the release of Shadowlands on Last Chance Records, the […]

Plenty of people go to see bands when they come through their town, but most people don’t think about everything that it takes to get those bands to their favorite club. Being on tour for a musician is both enlightening and daunting, as physically and mentally draining as it is stimulating. And no matter what, […]

David Lowery may be several decades removed from the agony of teen angst, but when he takes the stage with Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, the emotion that fueled early fan favorites like “Get Off This” and “Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)” is as real and raw as it was a quarter century […]

[rating=8.00] As one might expect of a collective of sorts, Band of Heathens worked their way into the spotlight fairly quickly. It wasn’t that they had any grand designs, or even any thoughts about becoming a band in the first place. What initially began as a series of Wednesday night jam sessions at a club […]