Posts by John Moore

Two-plus decades ago, not long after the release of 2002’s stellar Walking In A Straight Line, North Carolina’s The Mayflies USA, puzzlingly called it a day, despite growing buzz and their best reviews to date. Twenty years later, they realized they still had a little something left in the tank. And as if they’re trying […]

On her third record, and first for the Normaltown Records label, Kristina Murray is steeped in classic country and honky tonk. Leaning into heartache and loneliness, the Nashville-based songstress often falls in the same vein as Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, and George Jones.   Across nine tracks on Little Blue, the Georgia native uses small-town characters as […]

Murray Attaway is the first to admit it’s been a minute. Throughout the ‘80s, he fronted the wildly underrated Georgia jangle pop band Guadalcanal Diary and put out his first solo album in 1995. “I kept meaning to do another record, but I’m easily distracted,” he says. “It took me a while to focus.” In […]

Despite overwhelming critical praise for his 2022 debut, and tours with Noah Kahan – one of the biggest names in modern folk – and counting Zach Bryan as one of his earliest fans, the thought of pulling together the follow-up filled Jack Van Cleaf with dread. While he should have been brimming with confidence having […]

Kassi Valazza had spent a decade living in the Pacific Northwest, having relocated from Arizona. It was in Portland where she started to build up her following, honing her mix of folk and Americana and eventually signing to the local label, Fluff & Gravy Records. But after two albums and countless tours, she decided to […]

Indie pop four-piece Lucius have been around since 2007 and have already put out three solid records, but there is a feeling after listening to their fourth and latest LP, that the band is finally moving from the constant “ones to watch” lists to mainstream success. The 11-song self-titled self-produced record, while not flawless, is […]

Esther Rose’s 2023 record Safe To Run was a strong, lyrically confessional heavy album that proved she was more than ready for a much larger audience. With Want, she brings a bolder musical style to match the lyrics. She pulls in a number of collaborators to fill out the band, like members of Video Age, […]

For two decades, Canada’s Matt Andersen, equipped with an impressive, booming voice, has been delivering pristine modern blues across more than a dozen albums. But his latest, The Hammer & The Rose, is a far more intimate collection. Across 10 tracks, Andersen not only tones down the blues and a lot of the fiery solos […]

Billy Idol has never been afraid to pivot. With his band Generation X, he was among those at the forefront of the late ‘70s British punk movement. After the group dissolved and punk started to cede ground to New Wave, Idol’s sound evolved with the times, and while he remained an MTV and radio staple […]

Julien Baker, one of indie rock’s most consistently solid musicians for the past decade, is no stranger to sharing the spotlight, most recently as a member of the brilliant trio Boygenius. So, it’s no surprise that she opted to share the marquee once again, this time with fellow indie rock peer TORRES. What is a […]

Philly-based indie pop outfit The Tisburys have slowly been evolving their sound record to record and have landed on a particularly inspired form of modern power pop with Still Life Revisited, their fourth effort. Musically, the songs are punctuated with horns, synth, and stellar harmonies throughout, while lyrically, the band manages to tackle some pretty […]

Coming just a year after her last LP, Lily Seabird’s latest, Trash Mountain, is another deep dive into emotionally delicate indie pop-adjacent folk music. The record came together quickly in just a matter of months – after Seabird came home after a series of tours, both for her own music and as a touring bassist […]

Listening to the 20-track double album from Grey DeLisle, it’s hard to imagine her ever having a problem with writer’s block. But the musician – and Emmy-nominated voice actor – actually hit a pretty severe dry spell about a decade and a half ago. In the early 2000s, DeLisle has a consistent career, turning in […]

Since reuniting in 2005, Chicago pop-punk band the Smoking Popes have been, to put it kindly, conservative with their album output.  In fact, Lovely Stuff, their latest release, marks only their fourth release in the past two decades. Like all the efforts that have preceded it, the album is crammed with near-perfect three-minute pop-punk anthems, […]

Lucy Dacus’ fourth album Forever Is A Feeling – and first since her supergroup boygenius went on indefinite hiatus – does a brilliant job of blending lush arrangements into her own, well-established Indie Rock/Pop musical style. Throughout the record, Dacus brings in a slew of collaborators, including her boygenius bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, […]

Pug Johnson grew up just 30 minutes away from the Louisiana border in Beaumont, Texas, and it’s clear listening to his latest record, El Cabron, that much of that Cajun music managed to waft its way into that oil town. Across nearly a dozen tracks, Johnson deftly blends Texas country and swing with Cajun music […]

Brooklyn-based four piece The Tumblers are certainly not hiding their folk-pop influences on their debut, Tangerine. There are plenty of songs here that seem to take a cue from bands like The Lumineers, The Head And The Heart, and Noah Kahan. But there are also rowdier moments on the record that show the band clearly […]

For more than a decade, Justin Osborne has been fronting Susto, putting out a solid mix of Indie Rock and Americana across five records. The Susto Stringband is a fantastic experiment and evolution of his work, reworking seven songs from his cannon as bluegrass numbers, while adding in two new songs to the mix. The […]

Folk music is certainly at the core of Charlie Treat’s superb new album, Dawn Is Breaking, but it’s also so much more. Along with Americana, there are moments of jazz, indie pop, and rock influences weaved throughout, as well as the telltale echoes of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash – specifically in the lyrics. Treat’s […]

Since the late 1990s, Jason Boland and his longtime band The Stragglers have blended elements of classic country, bluegrass, and Southern rock, never straying too far from the formula that allowed them to steadily build up a strong fanbase. They’ve also managed to ignore the various fads that have dominated popular country music radio. While […]