Big Thief Craft Their Own Modern Songbook on ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ (ALBUM REVIEW)
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, the fifth album from American folk-rock force of nature Big Thief, isn’t so much a culmination of their career up to this point as it is the beginning of a whole new chapter. Like a butterfly freshly emerged from its chrysalis the album bears some of the […]
Rush Announce ‘Moving Pictures’ 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition
This news is going to bring down my uncle’s country place that no one knows about. Neil Peart’s January 2020 death closed the door on Rush ever again releasing newly-written music, but fans can look forward to a new “super deluxe” expanded edition of Moving Pictures slated for release on April 15 (or in Rush dates that’s […]
WATCH: Marty O’Reilly and the Old Soul Orchestra Share Riveting Live Performance of “Cocoon”
For the next however long it takes for me to write this, I have the unenviable task of trying to describe the ethereal – to put into words musical moods that eschew a label. The last hour has found me trying to formulate the sentences only to be stymied by the impossibility of what lies […]
25 Years Ago Today – Pavement Releases Fourth Album ‘Brighten the Corners’
25 Years Later: Revisiting The Resilient Depth of Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ ‘Beautiful World’
Produced and arranged by Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ Beautiful World (released 2/11/97) sounds as polished and potent a quarter-century after its release as it did upon its original issue. More importantly, the benefit of hindsight reveals how this fifth studio album of the Colorado band planted the seeds of […]
SONG PREMIERE: Raygun Carver Drop Ambitious Melodic Folk Narrative On “Houses We Haunted”
Veering between lush folk and orchestral nods, Raygun Carver surely sounds bigger than its parts. With warm earnest singing, brooding openheartedness, and a kaleidoscope of genres, this musical project of Pacific NW artist Michael Soiseth is surely a name we deserver to hear more of. Bad Thing, the follow-up to the artists’ 2020 LP Moon […]
On ‘People,’ Powerhouse Vocalist Hinda Hoffman Fronts Long-Running, Organ-Led, Soul Message Band (ALBUM REVIEW)
People, the first collaboration between powerhouse vocalist Hinda Hoffman and Chicago’s near-legendary Soul Message Band is the second installment in this writer’s self-dubbed “year of the organ-led bands.” Yes, 2022 is starting that way. This marks a couple of firsts too. It’s the first time the band has ventured into vocal jazz and the first […]
On ‘Mestizo,’ Rising Saxophonist Diego Rivera Bridges Cultures Via Highly Conceived Effort ‘Mestizo’ (ALBUM REVIEW)
Mestizo, his fifth album as a leader, may well be rising saxophonist/composer/arranger/educator Diego Rivera’s crowning achievement to date. The Michigan-born and raised and now Associate Director of Jazz Studies at Michigan State University delivers his third album as a leader for Posi-Tone and has found a home there both for his solo projects and as […]
Orville Peck Announces Highly-Anticipated Second Album ‘Bronco’ Out April 8th – Shares Tour Dates
Orville Peck, the fringed mask artist with the lonesome twangy howl should be the next crossover star here in months. In the meantime, he is following the success of 2019’s Pony with his sophomore album Bronco on April 8th. The fifteen track album will be available globally via Columbia Records and will be released in […]
Ian Noe Announces New LP ‘River Fools & Mountain Saints’, Shares New Single “River Fool”
Today, Kentucky folk-rocker Ian Noe releases his second single “River Fool,” a buoyant portrait of a local Kentucky figure, from his anticipated sophomore album River Fools & Mountain Saints, a masterpiece of high-energy roadhouse rockers and Appalachian ballads set for release on March 25 via Thirty Tigers. “River Fool” teems with mandolin, banjo and fiddle […]