Album Reviews

Eric Rachmany is best known as the lead singer of Rebelution. In that role, he is known to write super-catchy reggae songs that can get you thinking and dancing simultaneously. Like a lot of artists, Rachmany has taken on a new challenge without abandoning the band that has kept him busy for the last decade […]

Four-time Grammy winner, singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, is justifiably proud of making three immensely successful consecutive albums, all since his well-chronicled transition to sobriety. Three in a row is a feat not many have accomplished. Don’t blame him if he feels some pressure to pull off a proverbial four-bagger with his latest, Reunions. Reviewing the seldom […]

Nashville-based artist Mark Fredson is hardly a household name, but he has racked up some notable credentials over the last decade. He spent 10 years as the front man of Washington by way of Nashville rock outfit the Lonely H before branching off as a songwriter, pianist and producer who has collaborated with the likes […]

Okay, we’re a little late on this one, given that ten of the twelve discs in Erroll Garner’s Octave Remastered Series have already been issued, beginning last September. Yet, it’s never too late to inform you of great music, of which this series stretches from 1961-1976. Magician, the last of Garner’s studio albums, was issued […]

If you’re thinking that Ruthie Foster traded in her award-winning blues style to become a jazz singer, you are only partially right. Surely a vocalist of Foster’s caliber is versatile, and she’s already proven to be a great folk, gospel, and blues singer, also capable of covering rock standards. So, putting her in setting to […]

It was time for Gretchen Peters to take a break. She set the bar so high with three consecutively brilliant albums –  2012’s Hello Cruel World, 2015’s Blackbirds and 2018’s Dancing With the Beast, that she wanted to take a long-awaited pause and pay tribute to one of her major influences. “I had had the […]

Grant Dermody is a prolific harmonica player who mainly plays blues, but also branches into other genres like bluegrass. He has recorded with artists like Eric Bibb and Cedric Watson. He has also released three solo albums, and three with bands. Of the new album My Dony, he says, “The new album is pretty much […]

The cover art of Lettuce’s Resonate is a mirror image of its Grammy-nominated predecessor’s, Elevate, while its title is no less of an action verb. So it only stands to reason this seventh album is a marked digression from the earlier one, despite the fact it was written and recorded during the same Colorado Sound […]

For those of you who may be unaware, there’s a revolution going on in Russia, a jazz revolution that is. Having already covered a couple of projects from the Rainy Days label, let me borrow some of my words that appeared in another outlet. We’ll get to Sasha Mashin’s new project Happy Synapse in a […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on This Land Is Your Landfill, the new album from folk-punk outfit Homeless Gospel Choir, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

Funk can take a lot of different forms, from the party-rocking sounds of Parliament to the grooves of bands like The Haggis Horns. On their new instrumental album Man from the Future, Seattle band Polyrhythmics explore a variety of funk sounds from psychedelic to jazzy grooves. The album came about in part when the band […]

Nineteen records into his career, you kind of know what to expect with a Damien Jurado album. Since the late 1990s, the Seattle-based musician has been putting out mostly lo-fi folk consisting of emotion-heavy, smartly written songs. As Jack Black’s character in High Fidelity put it, Sad Bastard Music. And What’s New, Tomboy? Sticks mostly […]

The Coffis Brothers’ fourth album, In The Cuts, starts with the anthemic declaration we wanted to hear. You know, it’s the kind that makes you pause the song, unplug your headphones, switch that restored-vintage-stereo input to aux, and crank the volume knob as the garage door opens to that springtime sunlight. The steady pulse of […]

Peter Karp is certainly far from a household name, but he’s sung and written some of the most honest and compelling songs over the past two decades. And, he is still doing so as Magnificent Heart stands alongside his very best work including 2007’s Shadows and Cracks and 2010’s He Said She Said with Sue […]

Mark Lanegan’s Straight Songs of Sorrow, lives up to its title, a harrowing—and riveting—journey through the singer/songwriter’s life, and a companion piece to his memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep. You don’t need to have read the book to appreciate the honesty of the album, which makes a compelling argument for Lanegan as a contemporary Lead […]

Aloud is a rock and soul band from Los Angeles with two lead vocalists in Jen de la Osa and Henry Beguiristain. But this isn’t just another band from L.A., where musicians are a dime a dozen. Of Aloud, de la Osa said, it “took three states” to put the band together after she and […]

Multi-Grammy Award-winning vocalist/pianist Diane Schuur partners with Grammy-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts to co-produce her first album in six years. Running on Faith is a deep blues album with personal favorites that Schuur has longed to record. What’s even better is that her piano chops are on display throughout the session, recorded with Watts on tenor […]

Blue to Red is the third album in as many years for rising star of the London jazz scene, flutist, and saxophonist Chip Wickham. Enticed by some of the promo copy referencing Alice Coltrane, Yusef Lateef and London’s own Sons of Kemet, this writer was easily drawn in. The album does have elements pertaining to […]

Chelsea Williams may be the lesser-known of Blue Elan artists Rita Coolidge or Janiva Magness, yet she possesses their confidence and, like the latter, is willing to take some chances. Beautiful and Strange is her fourth album, having begun her career with her self-titled debut in 2006. This one follows 2017’s Boomerang, again with her […]

Field Trip is a long out-of-print 1972 recording of the New Riders of the Purple Sage opening for the Grateful Dead at the legendary Veneta, Oregon creamery benefit concert (documented on Sunshine Daydream (Rhino, 2013). The seventeen cuts proceeding in quick succession over the course of just over an hour’s playing time, ultimately furthering a […]