Nashville-based singer/songwriter/guitarist/mandolinist Brennen Leigh reminds us that roots music is about stories, not ZIP codes, on Prairie Love Letter, her reflection on growing up along the border between Minnesota and North Dakota. Folk-oriented music like this can sound light and […]
Sometimes it’s a struggle to describe an album, but fingerstyle blues singer/guitarist Cary Morin’s Dockside Saints makes the TV Guide-style capsule easy: “Acoustic blues frolics while under the influence of zydeco.” But to understand what that short explanation means in […]
Instruments come with assumptions. If you see a tuba, you expect a march or New Orleans jazz. An accordion prepares you for zydeco or polka. And if you see a 48-piece drum kit with a variety of gongs hanging behind […]
“Eclectic” is one of those album adjectives that can be challenging to process, especially for those of us on the more neurotic end of the spectrum. Does it mean the album’s songs all sound different? But how different? Is it […]
Like a beautiful black-and-white photograph, or cookie, for that matter, singer/bassist Amy LaVere’s Painting Blue, has some wonderful contrasts. Her voice is quiet, with a shy quality, like she’s unaware anyone is listening to her. Yet her vocals are the […]
As a culture, we’re not really equipped to address what happens to bands when their artists grow up. Most bands break up or remain in a state of suspended development. Kevn Kinney, the singer/creative force behind Drivin N Cryin, has […]
The geography of a band is often used as a shorthand to describe their sound. Nashville invokes country. Memphis conjures soul. Austin can mean blues. But upstate New York is often just code for “not New York City,” which is […]
It can be hard for singer-songwriters to stand out. With most songs of that genre built upon vocals and guitar, or vocals and piano, there’s not the usual sonic palette found in other musical styles to help an artist create […]
The ripples of grunge are a funny thing. While as a standalone genre, it’s pretty much extinct, some remnants have survived, weaving their way into other musical forms. And so the pleasant surprise of singer-songwriter Austin Meade’s Waves is not […]
There’s a startling moment on “She Ain’t Coming Back,” the fifth song on Chris O’Leary’s 7 Minutes Late. O’Leary howls over an acoustic blues groove, the desperation reaching such an intensity and emotional rawness that it actually triggers the response […]
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