Album Reviews

Duff Thompson is a songwriter, musician, and producer whose songs are a swampy blend of folk, pop, and garage rock. With special attention given to arrangement, his sound has been described as modern, classic, and timeless all at once. His debut album, Haywire, will be out December 11th on Mashed Potato Records.  He’s performed extensively […]

You may have noticed we have not heard much from the prolific Keith Jarrett lately. Now we have the devastating answer from an article published in The New Times just last week – “But this month Mr. Jarrett, 75, broke the silence, plainly stating what happened to him: a stroke in late February 2018, followed […]

Tales of the Soul is the culmination of a musical career that began in Devin B. Thompson’s early teens in the industrial city of Joliet, just southwest of the Windy City. He was the product of a musical family, and, like many a soul great, he has a church background: His father was a choir […]

Twenty-one years since Mr. Bungle last recorded an album together, the California experimental rock band returns with a new album, which is actually a re-recording of the first album the band ever made. In 1986, Mr. Bungle self-produced and released The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny on cassette tape, a fiery collection of thrash […]

It took a while to catch on, but by the mid-to-late 1990s a slew of punks, using The Pogues catalogue as the template, started to forge a solid Celtic Punk rock movement in the U.S., merging the anger and politics of Punk with the instruments associated with Celtic music (mandolins, accordions, banjos and the occasional […]

The ever-restless guitarist/producer/songwriter/film scorer King Khan who leads several bands, most prominent among them, King Khan and the Shrines, is known as a purveyor of psychedelic soul, punk-infused garage rock, gospel, and irreverent rock n’ roll. He has found yet another unexplored frontier, his first-ever jazz album, The Infinite Ones. The album features Marshall Allen […]

Hardened blues fans recall Nora Jean Wallace as Nora Jean Bruso, the powerhouse vocalist who appeared on two of Jimmy Dawkins’ albums in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and perhaps her most recent release, dating to 2004, the BMA-nominated, acclaimed Going Back to Mississippi.  The Chicago-based Nora Jean returns to the blues and to […]

Vanessa Collier is a musician who started playing the saxophone at age nine. While she was studying at Berklee, she landed a job touring with Joe Louis Walker. On top of that, she won a 2020 Blues Music Award for Best Instrumentalist –horn player. It was Walker who counseled her to strike out on her […]

Adianne Lenker has become one of the most prolific singer-songwriters today, not in the sense of sheer volume, as is the case with someone like John Dwyer or Ty Segall, but in her ability to release at least one album per year of almost unparalleled beauty and grace. Aside from her four stellar albums with […]

The headliner, Arizona’s DL Marble, writes great, straight-forward relatable songs and his producer/collaborator guitarist Eric Ambel can always be counted on for the driving, jangly, gutsy, rocking hooks. The combination works extraordinarily well, so much so that the two reunite again for the Brooklyn-produced One Line at a Time. (Ambel also co-produced Marble’s 2016 Not […]

The Kaleidoscope Quintet is not a band with recording or touring history. It’s a moniker adapted by a stellar group of musicians for this special performance captured live at the historic Deer Head Inn in 2013. That’s not to say they may resurface again as Dot Time Records is calling this their debut. Even though […]

Most likely you’ve already heard about the new Bruce Springsteen album Letter To You by now.  If you haven’t, it will also be accompanied by an Apple Music documentary, directed by his longtime collaborator Thom Zimmy.  You can also watch the official Apple-branded hour-long interview with Zain Lowe, which is a fantastic look at Springsteen’s […]

It’s amazing what a few lonely months shut inside your house while the world around you swirls with uncertainty can do to your mood. For Jordan Cailoa, of the Philly band Mo Lowda & the Humble, it clearly drove moments of deep introspectiveness. The singer/guitarist used his time in quarantine to write and record his […]

Just Dropped in (To See What Condition My Rendition Was in) is a heartwarming posthumous release by Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings that adds some heat to a series of familiar tunes that simultaneously pays tributes to Jones’ influences while honoring her legacy as the Godmother of a neo-soul movement that made stars out […]

One of Ty Segall’s many bands, Fuzz, returns with its third album III, an energetic mix of in-your-face guitar rock. The band’s first album since 2015 is a tour de force of gritty garage rock, with a snarling attitude and an emphasis on riffing. Multi-instrumentalist Segall mans the drums while Charles Moothart, a frequent collaborator […]

Michigan may not be the first place you think of when you think about country music, but if you spend enough time exploring music, you’re bound to find the unexpected. Rachel Brooke is a country artist from Michigan that makes you take notice. Just ask Shooter Jennings, who said, “Rachel is just hitting her stride, […]

The task of following up 1985’s massively popular Songs From The Big Chair was obviously a daunting endeavor. That record sold over 10 million copies; topped the US Billboard charts and spent 30 weeks in the UK top 10 music charts. Songs like “Shout,” “Head Over Heels” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” were […]

Malin Pettersen is pretty well-known in her native Norway. She appeared on Norway’s version of American Idol. In 2018, she won a Spellemann Prize for Best Country Album. She has also become known as a voice actress for American movie franchises such as Lego and My Little Pony. In recent years she has also gained […]

We are all figuring out ways to deal with this pandemic but musicians face some of the more difficult challenges. They can’t perform in crowded live venues, virtual shows do little for them financially, and that yearning to play with friends and perform for fans is growing stronger as the days pass. Southern California singer-songwriter […]

The beauty and power that Alexis Mahler creates with her voice and cello is simply mesmerizing. With patient and confident phrasing, a soothing resonance of vulnerability and strength, Mahler has delivered a poignant and intimate EP titled Away that draws us directly into her being. Songs of heartbreak, taking space, rebuilding a life, self care, […]