Album Reviews

Matthew Logan Vasquez admits he doesn’t like linear albums, stating they should be like life, disorderly. As All Get Out certainly has that feel, things shift in different directions, moods, and genres, sometimes shockingly so, from track to track.  The Delta Spirit frontman has a few solo albums to his name, and they all share […]

For a few years now, the multi-faceted and highly regarded artist Mac DeMarco has been wearing the same hat with the same yellow square on it. This yellow square represents Mac’s Record Label, a start-up of DeMarco that was primarily used to release his own work, along with select releases from artists like Vicky Farewell […]

To hear Seattle musician Ian Jones describe his childhood, he and his siblings were raised by a single mom, they were “bread-and-cheese-line poor” and his babysitter was a record player. And if Results Not Typical, his debut LP, is any indication, he had a hell of a record collection. Across 11 tracks, you can hear the […]

Warm Blanket, out April 7 via Ernest Jenning Record Company, was entirely produced and written by Denitzio themselves in the comfort of their own world, although comfort is far from a descriptor for the new LP. Over the course of 30 minutes, you are thrown into a whirlwind of revealing yet clever songwriting and arrangements that feel full despite their simplicity. 

It seemed inevitable that saxophonist and composer Walter Smith III, who has produced and appeared as a sideman on several Blue Note projects, would eventually join the stable of the label’s artists. With his debut, return to casual, Smith III follows up his 2014 self-released still casual with nine originals and one new arrangement of […]

Brett Newski, the hardest working guy in indie rock, has built a career out of DIY hustle and some truly great songs. For the past decade he’s been traveling the globe playing everywhere from dingy basements and coffee shops (and random Wal Marts) to major festival and theater stages – playing with bands like the […]

From the opening strains of Dan Horne’s debut full-length studio effort, Count The Clouds, it’s obvious the L.A.-based musician is entering some uncharted musical territory. 

There’s a reason Colors of Mind, the latest from Carolina Story, is not exactly a feel-good album. Ben and Emily Roberts, the husband-and-wife duo that make up Carolina Story, had just parted ways with their label and entered the studio shortly after to exorcise some creative ghosts. In that studio, the two sang about turmoil […]

On the politically charged Plastic Eternity, vocalist and songwriter Mark Arm & Mudhoney directs that anger at those destroying the environment, at the media, at right-wingers, and at anyone else who drew his ire during the pandemic.

Harpist and composer Brandee Younger turned heads and achieved a Grammy nomination for her 2021 Impulse! debut Somewhere Different and follows up that effort with Brand New Life which is mostly inspired by the work of pioneering harpist and composer Dorothy Ashby,

It’s no small irony that the ensembles billed as the Who since approximately 2004 have more accurately replicated the layered density of the group’s best studio albums than the original quartet did (even with the use of backing tapes). But it’s an irony of mammoth proportions that the two surviving members fronting these groups, vocalist […]

Boygenius is composed of three incredibly strong songwriters, although that’s not how they maneuver through their debut album.

On The Price of Progress, The Hold Steady is fully locked in as they deliver an evolved, cinematic offering of their barroom tales of relationship hardships around broken hearts calcified by more than recreational drug use. 

The combined versatility of Jody Stephens and Luther Russell, a/k/a/ Those Pretty Wrongs, is the definition of synergy in actio

The frenetic title track off of Wild Child’s fifth LP has some pretty dark origins. “End Of the World” was written towards the end of the massive 2021 ice storm that paralyzed Texas ultimately killing hundreds as a result of hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning. But Wild Child were able to channel that uncertainty and […]

What began as a plan for a live performance at London’s Barbican in honor of the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew in early 2020, inevitably postponed by the pandemic evolved into this massive 2LP project London Brew.

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on North Georgia Rounder, the new album from singer-songwriter Pony Bradshaw, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

Nathan Maxwell is best known for his work as the bassist of Flogging Molly. When you learn that he has  a new project, you might expect that it’s another punk band. That’s not the case. VOLORES is a project with his singer-songwriter wife Shelby. On their debut album Ages, they refer to their sound as […]

By the time Peter Case concludes the roughly forty-five minutes or so that is Doctor Moan, he has fully reconfigured a new persona for himself in line with the album’s title

In keeping with its artist billing, All Roads Lead Home is not a Neil Young and Crazy Horse album in the usual sense of the word. Rather than a group effort whereby the four-piece band collaborates to play music composed by the Canadian rock icon, it is a collection of tracks recorded by the individual members, with varying lineups of […]