Album Reviews

There are more high profile guests on Heidi Newfield’s The Barfly Sessions than one might find on most tribute albums. That’s partly due to the ridiculous amount of styles embedded in this one project, from blues-rock to slow burners, to country ballads and honky tonkin’ stompers. When Newfield shows up, she seems fair game for […]

Bobby Rush at age 86 survived a bout with CoVid-19 earlier this year and is back with a stripped-down acoustic effort that in one sense is a follow-up to his all-original 2007 Raw, the one that has him crossing over to an Americana audience for the first time. It also inspired a series of acoustic […]

Molly Tuttle continues to reveal surprises.  The former IBMA “Guitar Player of the Year” and 2028 American Music Award winner for “Instrumentalist of the Year” proved last year with her debut When You’re Ready that she’s more than a capable singer-songwriter. Now, with “…but I’d rather be with you” she shows us her unique takes […]

The prolific Barrett Martin is a Grammy-winning producer, drummer, and composer who sallies forth here with his band’s ninth album Scattered Diamonds. Martin provided a generous heaping of tracks here, making a lengthy CD that features 15 guest artists across its 17 tracks.  These artists reflect Martin’s global influences as they are singers and musicians […]

Two-time Grammy Award-winning and one of today’s most highly acclaimed vocalists, Gregory Porter, puts about as many genres and musical configurations as one could fit onto any album with a generous helping of 13 tracks (15 on the Deluxe version) for All Rise, his sixth studio album. In tow are his longtime bandmates, generally a […]

Sometimes music emanates from unexpected places. Zephaniah Ohora, in this case, delivers one of the most classic sounding country albums this side of Nashville, Bakersfield, Austin, or any other likely place you’d care to name. These are 21st-century songs about urban landscapes with an authentic classic country approach, played by a multi-generational band assembled by […]

Jonathan Richman’s fourth solo effort, I, Jonathan, came at a pretty momentous time in American music. In 1992, glam metal was still throwing punches that failed to connect as they gasped for relevancy, meanwhile Nirvana’s Nevermind had just about taken over the world and launched a thousand clones armed with distortion pedals and flannel shirts. […]

Nine years ago, Bright Eyes released The People’s Key which was supposedly the group’s very last LP. Bright Eyes’ lyricist and vocalist, Conor Oberst said in interviews that there would be no more music under the Bright Eyes moniker. Nine years later the group has double-backed on those statements, with their highly anticipated tenth studio […]

When No Joy’s debut Ghost Blonde came out in 2010, the band was instantly championed as a welcome addition to the nu -gaze movement. On that album, No Joy was able to manage the tricky balancing act of treating their wailing guitars to the point that they came out hushed and ethereal. While charming, the […]

Soprano and tenor saxophonist Teodross Avery with his ninth release as a leader, continues in his tradition of honoring jazz giants. Using two different quartets; the bandleader is joined by pianists Anthony Wonsey and DD Jackson, bassist Corcoran Holt, drummers Willie Jones III (president of WJ3 Records) and Marvin “Bugalu” Smith and percussionist Allakoi Peete. […]

The second part in Cold War Kids’ New Age Norms trilogy continues its pop flavor while dialing up the band’s danceable nature. Whereas Volume 1 was produced by singer Nathan Willett and longtime collaborator Lars Stalfors, the second part was produced by Sean Everett (Alabama Shakes, The War on Drugs), his first collaboration with the […]

Back in 2004 Now Here Is Nowhere broke The Secret Machines onto the national scene with big retro stomping and laser-blasting futuristic space rock appeal. After a few albums of diminishing returns and guitarist Benjamin Curtis departure from the band, then tragic death, The Secret Machines softly faded away. Now they return with Awake in […]

The Nils Lofgren Band’s live album Weathered is not just a suitable companion piece to the leader’s 2019 release Blue With Lou, it’s an uncanny mirror image of that studio album. Comprised of concert recordings culled from last year’s road work in support of the aforementioned record, this double-CD set carries much the same potency, […]

As faithful readers of these pages know, this writer loves an intriguing back story, especially when the music measures up. Welcome to the story of Juni Ata, aka Jesse Daniel Edwards, and his debut Saudade. He was raised in a small mountain town in Southern California in a deeply religious home, with minimal exposure to […]

Granted, most of you probably don’t know of Greg Copeland. If you do, you know that he’s a childhood friend and collaborator of Jackson Browne, or maybe that he wrote the hit song, co-written with Steve Noonan for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – “Buy For Me the Rain.’ The Tango Bar, rather unbelievably, is […]

When you spend enough time studying music, you learn that there are some unlikely stories of how bands came together. Blues Pills has as unlikely an origin story as any band you are will encounter. Zack Anderson and Cory Berry (formerly of Radio Moscow) met Swedish singer Elin Larsson in Iowa. They recorded two songs, […]

Naked Giants follow one of the most exciting debut rock albums in recent memory, 2018’s Sluff, with a fierce collection of unrestrained rock that bangs heads and gets songs stuck in them. The Shadow is a worthy follow-up, taking the frenetic riffing of the Seattle trio’s debut and building in a bit more melody. Produced […]

The adventurous, chameleon-like, affable Chicago pianist Johnny Iguana is finally making his blues debut as a leader. He’s been a sideman on countless Delmark albums and yes, he’s the same Johnny Iguana who leads the blues/jazz/rock band The Claudettes, who we reviewed on these pages in March. If you were unaware of his blues resume […]

Following in the grandiose footsteps of their previous albums, The Lemon Twigs’ third studio release Songs For The General Public does not fail to display the band’s immense musical chops in their typical style of controlled chaos. Originally set for May 1st, current conditions forced the album’s release date to unfortunately be pushed back to […]

Good Luck, Seeker is the third from Mike Scott and his current lineup of The Waterboys, their 14th overall, and follows 2017’s Out of the Blue and 2019’s Where the Action Is and like those, draws even more heavily on earlier Waterboys and Scott solo material. At times, the full band is revved up in […]