Album Reviews

[rating=7.00] Nikki Lane has been on a steady rise with each record she makes, garnering praise for her give-no-f***s cowgirl attitude and throwback country queen style. And never has either quality been so sharp than on her new release Highway Queen. A stylish, harmony-heavy record that packs a twangy punch, it finds Lane continuing to […]

[rating=7.00] To say that Chuck Prophet is a rock and roll obsessive would be an understatement. His love for rock music is so deeply rooted in him, it continues to inspire him in sound and in songwriting. On his latest record  Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins, Prophet pays homage to the genre and to […]

[rating=8.00] For most of her life, Pegi Young’s role was that of Neil Young’s wife, partner and musical sidekick, a satisfying set-up to be sure, but one that found her relying on his fame and stature with little regard for her own interests. After 36 years, all those connections were shattered by a painful divorce, […]

[rating=8.00] Names can be deceiving, especially when the handle in question belongs to Frontier Ruckus, a band based out of Detroit whose idea of making music has as little to do with creating a ruckus as snow does to falling in the Sahara. Still, after five albums, they obviously know what they’re doing, and even […]

[rating=9.00] Even as he devotes the majority of time to his ongoing solo career, Jay Farrar has applied a no less discerning focus on those projects with his post-Uncle Tupelo band, Son Volt. For the first group endeavor in four years, Notes of Blue, Farrar informs ten new songs with (by his own admission) the […]

[rating=8.00] “What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because […]

[rating=8.00] Yeah You, and I, the first solo album by Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist Tim Kingsbury, is a densely layered indie pop gem that rivals Kingsbury’s main band in its artistry. Under the stage name Sam Patch, Kingsbury began writing and recording the material shortly after ending Arcade Fire’s Reflektor tour, so it’s not surprising that […]

[rating=7.00] Robert Randolph falls into the category of virtuoso artist who has yet to truly capture his talents on a studio album. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he has good company (contemporaries Trombone Shorty and Gary Clark Jr. quickly come to mind) and is happy to make his way via the live show which […]

[rating=7.00] After five years as Mr. Elevator & The Brain Hotel, the Psych-Pop trio from Los Angeles has decided to shorten their moniker to just Mr. Elevator in conjunction with their sophomore release When the Morning Greets You. While there is no shortage of bands in the modern psych-pop scene, Mr. Elevator differentiates themselves by […]

[rating=7.00] After twenty years playing together, The Sadies aren’t showing any signs of slowing down. Northern Passages, the tenth studio album by the Toronto alt-country quartet, is an eclectic collection of roots rock that builds on its predecessors while incorporating influences from the various artists with whom the band has recently recorded. “Riverview Fog” opens […]