Album Reviews

Rock supergroups are not yet dead.  Dave Alvin recounts, “I had a crazy idea and was looking for musicians who perhaps didn’t think it was so insane.” There will be more on the inspiration for the inception of the group below but know that it includes Dave Alvin (guitar, vocals), Victor Krummnenacher (bass, vocals), David […]

Lee Ranaldo and Raül Refree are two fantastic guitarists, Ranaldo as a founding member of noise rock legends Sonic Youth and Refree as a flamenco innovator, yet their first co-release, Names of North End Women, displays almost zero guitars. However, these are also artists who work with sound just as much as their particular instruments […]

Tami Neilson is a Canadian-born New Zealand powerhouse vocalist, half-Patsy Cline, half-Wanda Jackson with a healthy dose of soul too. Put simply, she is a force of nature. While her 2018 Sassafrass was an impassioned feminist call to arms, here on Chickaboom! she’s more interested in delivering “popping firecrackers that, when stripped back to nothing […]

Tennis’ fifth full-length album, Swimmer, is an immersive collection of dreamy pop music that captures everything the duo does well, though it doesn’t stray from the formula started with 2011’s Cape Dory. Married duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley produced the album themselves, nine tracks of hummable melodies that were written during a four-month sailing […]

Most often female trios are associated with three top-notch vocalists, who get instrumental support from others, usually session players. After all, the album Trio from Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt was the blueprint for this kind of aggregation. Puss N Boots is different. Not only do all three members, Norah Jones, Sasha Dobson […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on Brave Faces Everyone, the new album from punk rockers Spanish Love Songs, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

One of the most telling aspects of Marty Stuart’s 1999 concept album The Pilgrim is that it essentially moved his style into a totally new direction, from chart-topping hits, into some of the best concept albums we’ve heard in any genre over the past two decades. They include Souls Chapel, Badlands, Ghost Train, and Way […]

Jangling Sparrows is a trio from North Carolina whose lead singer Paul Edelman has shared the stage with stalwarts such as Drive-By Truckers and The Bottle Rockets. On the band’s new album, Bootstraps and Other American Fables, the band takes its place among those alt-country acts in showing its capacity for strong songs that tell […]

When you’ve built a strong fan base from singing songs about pain and sadness, it is tough to imagine where you go from there once you’ve found a little inner peace. John Moreland has, for the past several years, succeeded in shredding our hearts to absolute bits, making us ugly-cry to his soulful songs about […]

This year marks twenty-four years since New York-based Nada Surf released their debut album High/Low with its spoken-word rocker “Popular” blasting onto the airwaves. As the nineties drew to a close, and after the limited commercial success of their follow-up album The Proximity Effect, the band was forced to take day jobs and many fans […]

In the late ‘90s renowned composer and saxophonist Dave Liebman embarked on a project to musically interpret the four natural elements – water, air, fire, and now Earth, marking the culmination of the 4-album opus. Each was recorded with a different supporting unit and Earth, Liebman’s impassioned plea for the planet, (releasing barely two weeks […]

Joe Russo has a had a wide and varied career working with members of the Grateful Dead, Phish, The Hold Steady and Ween, as well as many successful recordings/tours as half of the Benevento/Russo duo and leading his own successful outfit Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, however, Russo has never released a solo record until phér•bŏney. […]

The Williamsburg, Brooklyn based Afrobeat band Antibalas are celebrating their twentieth year as a collective with the release of Fu Chronicles, proving they are still on top of their game and even improving as a unit. While the band is known for their exuberant live shows, this six song collection from Daptone Records is a […]

Last week we introduced you to the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s Music of Wayne Shorter and indicated that we’d cover more releases from their label. This installment is a suite of seven movements composed and conducted by the JLCO’s lead alto saxophonist, Sherman Irby, Inferno was performed live in 2012 and captured on this […]

Renowned bassist, bandleader, composer, artistic director, and preeminent jazz spokesperson Christian McBride has turned his childhood fascination of Black American history into a 20-year-long Civil Rights project highlighting the icons Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Muhammad Ali, as well as Barack Obama on The Movement, Revisited: A Musical Portrait of […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City, the new album from Beach Slang, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

This short passage captures this writer’s reaction to the stirring performance of Sammy Miller & the Congregation at last August’s Newport Jazz Festival – “Sunday began in rousing fashion as NYC’s “joyful jazz” ensemble, Sammy Miller & The Congregation—a barefoot clad sextet with three horns led by vocalist/drummer Miller—showed that jazz can be lots of […]

To many Miss Tess is a throw-back, drawing from old school blues, jazz, and country but what sets her apart from others who fall into that realm is her ability to inject more modern elements like punk and psychedelia into her mix. She has been relatively under the radar until perhaps now with The Moon […]

At the risk of sounding lazy, life is so much easier when an album title perfectly describes the work. The Cadillac Three’s Country Fuzz precisely captures the delightfully ragged album, which soaks a straight-forward country in a tub full of distortion, creating music that will delight metal heads and line dancers, both groups previously only […]

The choruses and harmonies in some of these songs on Half Moon Light from Americana trio The Lone Bellow will slay you. It is refreshing to have an album that brings us out of the darkness. Go ahead and sing along and/or dance. That’s what the band intends. These three-part harmonies and killer songwriting mix […]