Album Reviews

[rating=7.00] The Austin trio Greyhounds have always had an affinity for the soul music from Memphis. On Cheyenne Valley Drive they wanted to directly capture the Bluff City’s vibe by recording at the newly refurbished Sam Phillips Recording Studio. Their previous album was tracked at the city’s famous Ardent Studios. With acclaimed engineer Matt Ross-Spang, […]

[rating=8.00] Phil Madeira is by turns multi- instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, illustrator, painter, producer, sideman, front man. Madeira, by his own admission, is far from a household name but he’s become a fixture in Nashville and certainly in Americana circles for nearly three decades. He has quietly released five solo critically-acclaimed records, two in 2015, and has […]

[rating=6.00] There have been surprisingly few raging protest albums during the Trump presidency, most have been resigned to stunned, can’t-believe-this-happened status, but with the release of Ministry’s 14th studio full-length AmeriKKKant, the industrial metal legends seemed to be the perfectly poised to increase the unrest threat levels. Unfortunately, the album is tired and squarely in the […]

[rating=9.00] Eels’ new album, The Deconstruction, nearly didn’t happen. After taking a four-year hiatus from which he wasn’t certain that he’d return, Mark Oliver Everett, the band’s eternal mastermind and provocateur, slowly recovered his muse. It didn’t happen all at once; the new music came into being at intermittent stages and with no particular plan. […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on Gran Pavo Real, the new album from country rockers Great Peacock, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

[rating=7.00] When I first saw the Naked Giants’ frenetic shredding onstage a few months back, it felt like capturing lightning in a bottle. Their performance was youthful and wild like they were making it up as they went along and it just happened to come out perfectly. Their look was nostalgic, like 70s punk colliding […]

[rating=8.00] Rod Picott is a multi-faceted writer. This double CD set of songs, Out Past the Wires, is the inspiration for an accompanying book of short stories. While we deal only with the music in the review, note that less than three years after his previous release, Fortune, Picott has become a published poet, written […]

[rating=9.00] When you win a Grammy as Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite did in 2014 for Get Up! an encore is certainly called for. In No Mercy in This Land the collaborative duo reaches even deeper into spare, haunting country blues, with touches of soul, gospel, and shuffling blues. This is an album that could […]

[rating=9.00] There are times where a band’s name and album cover provide little or no indication of what to expect. And when said references offer an image that’s the exact opposite of the music that accompanies those initial impressions, it may dissuade any initial encounter. The fact is, Great Peacock’s handle and the peacock covered […]

[rating=8.00] Within the span of three studio albums, one being a holiday collection, Kacey Musgraves established herself as sharp-witted, sincere, and assured. Her brand of country music recalls the storytelling glory days of the 90s; characters live and die in her songs, holding up mirrors to themselves and thereby to those of us following their […]