Reviews

The Lowest Pair is an American folk duo made up of Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee, known for their intertwined vocal harmonies and banjo-forward songwriting. Formed in 2013, the pair has built a dedicated following through records that balance traditional folk roots with plainspoken, emotionally direct lyrics. Having a particularly prolific run in their […]

Last August, thrash metal icon Dave Mustaine announced the end of Megadeth. After one final album, the band’s seventeenth, and a farewell tour, Mustaine is hanging up his Flying V guitar. This is partly due to issues with his hand, including arthritis and Dupuytren’s contracture, a painful condition that causes one or more fingers to […]

Inevitably, two camps will form over Lucinda Williams’ latest, World’s Gone Wrong. Some will praise her for taking on America’s socio-political crises head-on. The ‘shut up and play” crowd, on the other hand, will argue that we didn’t need Lucinda Williams to inform us of how chaotic things are. Yet, neither camp can deny that […]

There is a specific brand of chaotic energy that only South London seems to produce, and SHAME brought every ounce of it to Boston’s Brighton Music Hall this past Monday, January 19. Currently tearing through North America in support of their visceral latest release, CUTTHROAT, the quintet didn’t just take the stage, they seized it. […]

The last time we heard from The Format, the pop duo of Nate Ruess and Sam Means, the world was a much different place. The band’s previous LP arrived twenty years ago in the summer of 2006, and if anyone ever asks what that summer sounded like, The Format’s Dog Problems is a good place […]

Justin Townes Earle, the deeply talented but sadly troubled folk/Americana musician, succumbed to an accidental overdose just over five years ago. Yet within the span of just weeks, an authorized biography—What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome—has been released, and musician Sammy Brue is issuing an album largely drawn from Earle’s journals. Aptly titled The […]

It’s hardly fair to say guitarist/composer Julian Lage saved his best work for Blue Note Records. After all, he released a handful of memorable albums, such as Arclight, prior to joining the iconic jazz label.  Still, there’s no doubt Lage has stretched himself since issuing Modern Lore and Love Hurts roughly a decade ago, and, for this fifth outing on […]

On January 16th, 2026, indie-folk songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov performed at the gorgeous Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama. He delivered a soft yet powerful performance that felt more like an intimate conversation than a concert. This was the third stop on his intimate acoustic winter tour. As soon as he took the stage with just […]

The Nottingham, UK-based Sleaford Mods’ newest offering, Demise of Planet X on Rough Trade, is a screed against modern society delivered with a thick East Midlands accent, slang, and a fed-up point of view, set to electro post-punk bump-and-grind.   The duo of Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn have been at this for a long time, and the group’s thirteenth […]

Nashville-by-way-of-Philly musician Langhorne Slim has released more than half a dozen records blending folk, Americana, and the occasional indie-pop song. But five years after Strawberry Mansion—a deeply personal, post-pandemic record that in part documented his journey to sobriety, delivered through often delicately beautiful musical movements—he has found his way to a louder amp and strapped […]