Posts by John Moore

Juliana Hatfield is one of those truly great Gen X musical touchstones who remain as prolific and musically relevant now as she was at the height of her popularity in the 1990s. The longest stretch she’s gone without a solo album in more than 30 years was the four-year span between 2000 and 2004 (and […]

Crammed into the basement of Philly’s First Unitarian Church on November 19th, Austin’s Die Spitz tore through just over a dozen songs, fusing the spirit of late-’70s Orange County hardcore with the sharpened political consciousness of Gen Z. The band — whose members were born decades after hardcore first blew open — managed to channel […]

The record industry’s shift away from vinyl in the late ’80s and ’90s did a real disservice to live albums. The rise of CDs — and the ease of skipping past less familiar tracks — may have been convenient for albums padded with filler, but it taught a generation of listeners to overlook the deeper […]

There is an intimacy to Lydia Luce’s third and latest LP, Mammoth, that feels almost invasive. Across a dozen ethereal tracks, she touches on pain and relationships, eventual acceptance, and ultimately to contentment, all delivered over a lush soundtrack. Luce gets right into it with the opening title track —a slow-tempo, remarkably beautiful song about […]

Jeremy Pinnell’s latest LP edges away from the strictly traditional country sound that anchored his early records, where Roots, Western Swing, and Honky Tonk set the tone. His new Shooter Jennings-produced release, Decades, builds on that foundation but folds in streaks of blues and 1970s rock—not that surprising given the eclectic mix he was raised […]

The 1980s were heady times for synthesizers and drum machines. Ushering out the distorted three-chord guitars and traditional drum/bass/guitar lineups of the punk and stadium era rock of the decade that preceded it. New Wave bands like OMD, Human League, and The Pet Shop Boys created a dance-friendly genre that was light on sneers and […]

For a band that’s constantly on the road, it’s hard to believe The Lemonheads haven’t released an album of original material in nearly twenty years. Love Chant marks their first collection of new music since 2006’s self-titled record. The 11 tracks here mark a curious blending of the band’s earlier punk-fused records with their more […]

If the latest offering from Bird Streets (the alter ego of John Brodeur) sounds a little paranoid and isolating, you can chalk that up to the global pandemic. Four years in the making, much of The Escape Artist, the third effort from Bird Streets, was written and recorded during the lost COVID years, where uncertainty […]

The 2022 debut from Kansas City duo Katy Guillen & The Drive (led by music and life partners singer/guitarist Katy Guillen and drummer Stephanie Williams), Another One Gained, offered a solid indie rock record that leaned into a variety of influences from roots to garage rock. But on their follow-up, Make That Sound, the pair wanted to […]

Last year, Joshua Ray Walker was in the middle of intensive chemotherapy treatment for stage 3B colon cancer. Given where his head was at, it would be understandable if his latest LP, Stuff, were a collection of songs questioning mortality, life after death, and what we leave behind; a themed record about the final days. What […]

Now ten albums into his solo career — while still keeping his day job as frontman for The Old 97’s — Rhett Miller delivers his most stripped-down and confessional work yet with A lifetime of riding by night. This darker, more introspective tone can potentially be attributed to Miller’s recent gig teaching a songwriting class […]

For her third album, Nashville-based Kashena Sampson pivots away from her more traditional folk-leaning roots toward a moodier, psychedelic folk-rock sound that gives her music a darker edge and continues to add to her appeal. You can hear influences as varied as Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux, and Tori Amos woven throughout the nine tracks that […]

Nicki Bluhm relocated from California to Nashville in 2017 at the end of a tumultuous period in her life. She had just divorced her husband and former bandmate, she parted with her group The Gramblers, and set out on reviving her solo career. Nashville has clearly been good to her, yet she even namechecks the […]

Listening to Toronto-based musician Beta Trip (known to his family as Steve Lewin), it appears as if the mid-1990s never ended. On Superette, his debut LP, echoes of Clinton-era alt-rock influences, from Toad the Wet Sprocket and Better Than Ezra to Tonic, are heard on nearly every song here. The layered guitars and emotional lyrics are a […]

Throughout her debut record, Things I’ve Said Before, classically trained folk musician Remi Goode relies solely on a nylon-stringed guitar. While this is not unheard of for country and folk musicians—Willie Nelson has been playing one for 55 years—it’s certainly not the norm nowadays. But the choice gives rich warmth and softer tones to an […]

Dave Hause’s musical style is best described by an old Frank Turner lyric: “The path I chose isn’t straight and narrow/It wanders around like a drunken fellow.” From his hardcore past (The Curse, Paint It Black) to his punk band (The Loved Ones) to acoustic folk (his solo work), Hause has moved fluidly across genres. […]

Ten years have passed since Motion City Soundtrack — a band that helped define the late-’90s/early-’00s pop-punk/emo hybrid — last released an album. But between the revival of the Vans Warped Tour, the Millennial catnip of the When We Were Young fest, and “emo nights” that pop up at local clubs across the country, now […]

Written on the road while supporting acts like Noah Kahan and Dave Matthews, Briscoe’s new album Heat of July unfolds as a musical travelogue—an exploration of the landscapes and stories encountered across the US and the characters that live there. And while the title was inspired by the temperatures of West Texas, the Austin-based Americana/folk […]

Trapper Schoepp’s seventh LP Osborne borrows its name from a unit at the Betty Ford clinic – a place where the Wisconsin musician ended up after a decade of dependence on prescription pain meds. Just one month after being released from the legendary treatment facility, a clean and revived Schoepp was in the basement of […]

Superchunk took the stage at Philly’s Ardmore Music Hall on Wednesday, September 10th just hours after the controversial right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on a Utah college campus. As commentators online scrambled to sanitize Kirk’s legacy of division and hate, speculation grew over whether Superchunk—a band with a history of calling out […]