Billy Joe Shaver made a lot of records before he died in 2020, but his songwriting paid the bills. While the Texas-born maverick once joked he had a knack for putting labels out of business, a slew of other artists […]
Poet, soothsayer, boss, shaman, future of rock and roll: Bruce Springsteen has had a lot of capes thrown around his shoulders throughout his career. But recently he realized he also had a bespoke accessory, a soulman cape languishing in his […]
It’s taken a few years for word of Elizabeth Moen’s remarkable vocal work and bluesy rock melodies to spread beyond her Midwestern roots, but Wherever You Aren’t is the ideal vehicle to carry her music farther than ever before, a […]
If you live in a big city and spend most of your day staring at a computer, you likely harbor the dream of moving to the country, someplace where the pace is a bit slower and you can finally hear […]
With their latest album, Palomino, Johanna and Klara Söderberg, aka First Aid Kit, again share their irresistible voices and impeccable harmonies. Supporting musicians offer an array of percussion, strings, synths, and textural complements, the project unfurling as the duo’s most […]
Rayland Baxter was the only person who could harness the multitude of sonic pleasures on his latest, self-produced release If I Were a Butterfly. The predictably unpredictable Baxter holed up alone in an old rubber band factory in Kentucky for […]
It’s been six years since Toad the Wet Sprocket frontman Glen Phillips released a solo album. That was Swallowed by the New, a rumination on the loss he felt in the aftermath of his divorce. Since then, the world surrounding […]
The opening track of Witness starts sparely, with Angela Easterling’s aching, crystalline vocals ascending over Brandon Turner’s Rusty Young-like lap steel guitar licks. The song builds layer by layer, evoking the exquisite pain of looking back folded into the clear-eyed […]
Ben Cramer is a man between stages. Given the timing of his third LP, that sounds about right. Cramer’s creative nom de plume is Old Sea Brigade, an outlet he’s used for the last several years to craft an emotive […]
If nothing else, country music is about nostalgia, the sad realization that you can never quite go home again, even if you never leave. On Gabe Lee’s The Hometown Kid, Lee illustrates that you can come from a big city […]
