Album Reviews

[rating=9.00] Music isn’t just about sound. It’s also location-based. Beloved songs are often beloved, not just because of the music, but because of the memory associated with the music. Where you are when you hear something impacts how you feel about what you hear. So consider that Giulia Millanta’s beautiful, Conversation with a Ghost was […]

[rating=10.00] There was a time in America where you could sip on a deathly sweet and strong tropical cocktail and not have to remind yourself that Donald Trump was president. Sure, the 1940’s and 50’s weren’t exactly paradise, but with the explosion of tiki bars and restaurants across the country, it was certainly easier to […]

[rating=8.00] On their excellent 2016 sophomore release We All The Light, River Whyless’ organic folk/ world-beat style was infectious. Now on Kindness, A Rebel current America cultural tribalism injects itself fully, yet the results remain engaging. The Asheville, NC quartet (Ryan O’Keefe: vocals, guitar Halli Anderson: vocals, violin Alex McWalters: drums Daniel Shearin: vocals, bass, harmonium) […]

[rating=9.00] Bluegrass isn’t a new musical genre, but the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, part of the 2000 film, gave it a very grand, very specific, relatively mainstream moment, that eventually passed. Sure, there have been some subsequent moments where aspects of bluegrass have bubbled back into popular culture. Swedish DJ Avicii’s huge hit, […]

[rating=7.00] One might think it’s a bit early in their infancy for string band Twisted Pine to offer up a covers EP. Having written every song on their well-received debut, Dreams might have been conceived as a stopgap of some sort, one designed to give them ample time to write more material of their own […]

[rating=7.00] Howlin’ Rain’s The Alligator Bride may be indebted to some readily-discernible contemporary rock influences-unlikely opposites such as Free and the Grateful Dead-but only indirectly so and then only gleefully so. There’s not one iota of slavish devotion on the band’s first release for Silver Current Records but, on the contrary, musicianship as unforgiving as […]

[rating=8.00] It seems that there’s a revival of funk guitarists going on. Just two weeks after Resonance released three albums of Grant Green’s evolution funk from the 70s, Omnivore has released a live session from Detroit funk master Dennis Coffey – One Night at Morey’s 1968. Even if you don’t know it, you’ve all heard […]

[rating=9.00] The last three and a half years have been really tough for San Francisco’s Mother Hips. This band has weathered a series of setbacks that, short of the death of a band member (which was way too damn close in this case), would have stressed even the most storied and successful bands out there. […]

[rating=8.00] While most of the hip-hop world’s focus centers around the Pusha T-Drake beef, in case you missed it A$AP Rocky released a very personal and groundbreaking album Testing on 5/26. Testing is Rocky’s third studio album, but this one’s significance may be greater than either of his previous releases. This is the first album release since […]

[rating=7.00] The Mulligan Brothers are an evocative bunch, and though they’re not brothers at all — as evidenced by the fact that they don’t share the same surname and that there’s at least one woman in the bunch, they manage to encompass a fairly wide expanse of musical terrain. The influences are sometimes obvious — […]