Building from the open-hearted honesty of her debut, Tori Amos has amassed one of the most impressive discographies of any artist over the last twenty years. The one thing, however, that she has never shied away from is concept, and its first truly successful fruition in the last ten years is Night of Hunters, out September 20 on Deutsche Grammophon Records.
Two years after Crazy Heart’s release, one gets the impression that Bridges got a taste of the Bad Blake character and liked it too much to let it go. That said, it’s also easy to picture Bridges standing outside the recording studio like a painter in front of a blank canvas, determined to create something that’s never been done before. Likely to be embraced by the alt-Country ccmmunity and college radio, let’s hope this is the first of many records like this from Jeff Bridges.
If the lyrics weren’t so sharp and the wry observations so focused, you’d swear Stephen Malkmus just invited some friends over and recorded an album over a quiet evening in the garage after work. The 15 tracks that comprise, Mirror Traffic, Malkmus’ latest endeavor with his band of collaborators, the Jicks, flow by with that breezy feeling that has become a hallmark of Malkmus’ solo work.
Unlike those lying Doobie Brothers, Sisters 3 is actually a band comprised of three sisters: Cassandra, Beatrice, and Anna Christie Sadler. The Philadelphia trio has a vintage style, but it would be a mistake to lump them in with the folk pop revival trend of recent years. Their second album, Coruscate at the Meadow Gate, has a sound too diverse to fit neatly in any genre.
It’s quite the distance from the Appalachians to Colorado, but for the duo of Fort Collins singer-songwriters Charlotte Formichella and Lynn Scharf – known as Driftwood Fire – they wouldn’t have it any other way
For a band that has been gaining momentum over the past several releases, Blitzen Trapper’s latest, American Goldwing finds the Portland group pausing a bit to catch their breath.
World Wide Rebel Songs at its core resembles the structure of The Nightwatchman’s previous two records, but the sound broadens somewhat with the addition of more production instrumentals.
A large thematic portion of The Wandas debut album appears to be focused around the idea of chasing after love, or quite possibly the missing out on that existence. Listening to the instrumentation of the majority of this album, it wouldn’t be as apparent to interpret the lyricism as depressing matters; it nearly is disguised. That could be viewed as a success in terms of expressing, or changing, that idea within the sound that makes up this band.
he effervescent enthusiasm that pervades Tommy Keene’s new album, Behind the Parade, belies the artist’s nearly thirty-year career as a cult figure. Sample the previous high points of his discography– Places that Are Gone or Based on Happy Times– and listen for a discernible difference in energy.
Tripper has more of a narrative focus than previous Fruit Bats efforts. On his fifth album, Eric D. Johnson consciously shifts to story-based songs.
