There's always been a certain forward-looking, open-minded quality about the music of Earl Scruggs. He forever changed the direction of bluegrass music in 1945 when his three-finger banjo roll came to the attention of Bill Monroe. And his accomplishments in the past six decades would rival those ...
Let's say you lived in Kansas City between 1978 and 1981. The odds were great you still didn't know much about the Titan Records label, which released eight singles and a compilation album in those ye...
The considerable mystique surrounding David Eugene Edwards’ music – with 16 Horsepower or with Wovenhand, which appears to be his primary gig at the moment – isn’t entirely of his own making. Most of ...
The Finally LP compiles ten examples of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon frontman Mark Kozelek’s artistic modus operandi: acoustic guitar delicately picked and gently strummed; vocals delivered wit...
If 2008 was the year the masses finally became acquainted with the extraordinary talent of Glen Hansard – through his Oscar-winning song with Marketa Irglova under the name Swell Season – it's likely ...
In the darkness of this last summer, when listening to music had become a reminder of things lost, and not of joys yet to be discovered, this simple album of unaccompanied voices singing to a god I do...
Ersi Arvizu is best-known for her stint with El Chicano, a jazz-inflected East Los Angeles rock band of the early 1970s, but she sang in several other Chicano soul groups both before and after that, a...
Any time interesting male and female singers team up, the comparisons are obvious and tempting: Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra, Johnny Cash & June Carter, George Jones & Tammy Wynette, and so on. Yet t...
Trying to pick the best among the Replacements' three mid-period masterpieces – Let It Be (1984), Tim (1985), and Pleased To Meet Me (1987) – is a bit like trying to select a favorite season. Springti...
Many folks, often with a sigh of relief, considered Carried To Dust a return to form for Calexico after 2006's Garden Ruin. Certainly the signals are there: cover art by Victor Gastellum, recording at...
Singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli's emphasis on jazz and pop standards echoes the style that Harry Connick Jr. pursued before re-embracing his New Orleans funk roots. John is the son of venerable jazz ...
"Music discovery" is a newish buzzword of this decade, now that it's easier than ever to make a recording yet harder to figure out which ones are worth listening to. Independent bloggers and web softw...
It takes a mixture of generosity and suspension of disbelief to want to hear what Jamey Johnson has done since "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" (he was one of the three writers who gave Trace Adkins that part...
The Memphis-based Ardent Studios hosted numerous sessions that overflowed from their neighbor Stax, including Sam & Dave's Soul Man, Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul and Booker T. & the MG's' Soul Limbo...
Raphael Saadiq (born Charlie Ray Wiggins) is best known as a producer (for the likes of D'Angelo, Joss Stone and the Roots) and as the leader of Tony! Toni! Toné!, a new jack swing and R&B band that h...
When you think about it, it's entirely fitting that Texas singer-songwriter Hayes Carll's fall tour was underwritten by The Onion. Trouble In Mind, Carll's third disc (and first for Lost Highway), is ...
Across the height and breadth of the so-called Dirty South, there's no hip-hop act that is dirty and southern in quite the ways that Nappy Roots are. First of all, Nappy Roots are "dirty" not only bec...
Despite some generally lousy indicators (the economy, the environment, international relations), the world faces 2009 with a sense of hope for better days ahead. Whether or not that hope is well-place...
I've been hearing voices this year, not inside my head, but great voices backed by great musicians making great music – the Mother's Best Flour Show radio transcripts of Hank Williams, and the expande...
As majestic as the music is on The Stand Ins, Okkervil River leader Will Sheff’s great talent is that he’s one hell of a wordsmith. On what’s being billed as the official sequel to The Stage Names, Ok...
In addition to a place on the year-end list, some artists end up with a place in the heart. A special spot is reserved for those who not only drift into radar range unexpectedly but also have to jump ...
Is it the Canadian in him that allows Jason Collett to slip into his scruffy, post-hipster persona so unassumingly? Whatever the factor, it would be a mistake to take this Toronto rocker lightly. For ...
Another Country is an album of introspection and inspiration that came about, as Tift Merritt tells it from the stage, from a need for a change of scenery and a Google search of "Paris," "piano," "ren...
Paul Westerberg is probably not going to make the album that some of us have been waiting for since whenever you think his last great record was. (Pleased To Meet Me if you're being honest, All Shook ...
Red Letter Year finds Ani DiFranco subverting a whole new batch of stereotypes. For nearly twenty years now, DiFranco has been pleasantly bushwhacking listeners with the notion that tart declarations ...
Some consider Real Animal a creative pinnacle for Alejandro Escovedo, "a career album," though by my count it's at least his fourth career album. The first was 1992's Gravity, produced by Stephen Brut...
With her second set of cover songs, Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power) made a classic album. And not just in the sense that the performances and material will stand the test of time. Jukebox feels like ...
From northern California, Linda Perhacs recorded one album for the Kapp label and promptly vanished into obscurity. This was perhaps inevitable, given the proliferation of singer-songwriters in 1970,...
For those who haven't been saved, as Christian true believers call their condition, it may be hard to contemplate listening to a gospel record, much less buying one. Still, every now and then, a recor...
There's little surprise that Gary Louris could make a solo album superior to or at least comparable with the seven albums he recorded with the Jayhawks. The band's seventeen-year career required more ...
When K.D. Lang stepped up to duet with Roy Orbison on "Crying" in 1987, she became recognized as probably the biggest-voiced contemporary pop singer in the world. Nobody else could go womano a mano wi...
Forty years ago, when my buddy Paul's parents were out for the night, we'd crank up his dad's fancy stereo and blast B.B. King's Live At The Regal. For rock fans turned onto the blues by Brits such as...