Archive for the New Stuff / What’s On Sale Category

The band’s second Bloodshot LP, Years, bears perhaps an even greater impact. Throughout Years, Shook displays a deadpan, no-bullshit vocal delivery that matches her unguarded, straight-from-the-gut songwriting. Dispensing with all affectation, she directs an arrow straight from the core of the songs to your ears. when you listen to Years, you’re hearing the stories of somebody who’s been through her share of

Take one of the world’s foremost soul interpreters, turn her loose on the songbook from roots music’s most respected singer-songwriter, bring in a veteran and sympathetic boardman who entices some of his celebrated musician friends to guest, and hang on — as this perfect storm yields a riveting meeting of the minds. But Bettye LaVette doesn’t just saunter through Bob Dylan’s better known material;

How does one represent in 2018 as both rock hero and cross-cultural ally? It’s a question every artist ultimately needs to answer for themselves. Jack White seems to be wrestling with the question on Boarding House Reach – a messy, sprawling, daffy, howling set that sounds spiritually hungry, collectively driven and, instructively, a little bit lost.

The chorus that Georgia Hubley sings softly on the second track of Yo La Tengo’s 15th studio album serves almost as a mission statement for the trio: “Whenever I see you, there are shades of blue.” Yo La Tengo are, as so often, blue: but theirs is not the midnight blue of despair, but the pale blue of melancholy, and sometimes the sharp, unending blue of a cloudless sky.

If a brain in a jar could observe the world, make sense of it and churn it into a batch of songs, it would make the album American Utopia. This brilliantly analytical album is from David Byrne — an American treasure, an artistic thinker and creator responsible, in part, for the some of the most memorable and distinctive music of the past 40 years.

Those looking for a sizzling new platter to raise the roof at their next party can stop their searching; Barrence Whitfield has you covered. The Boston based R&B wild man has been cranking out his raw power brand of high octane grungy garage soul since the mid-80s. He took a 15 year sabbatical after 1995’s Ritual of the Savages,

It may feel like we’ve known about supergroup I’m With Her for some years now because of their spontaneous performances at music festivals like Newport Folk and Telluride Bluegrass, and then, last year, an EP release and short tour with Punch Brothers. Not to mention, all three members are accomplished, well-respected artists whose work is already so familiar to us.

On her Bloodshot Records debut, Ruby Boots continues to map out a polished-yet-fearless, bare-knuckled self, previously hinted at on her last album, Solitude. The album rips right open with “It’s So Cruel,” strutting through the door with dual harmonic, bawdy, fuzzed-out guitars, reminiscent of a glammy, ‘70s southern-rock-soaked Queens of the Stone Age. It all captures the meteoric emotional flares of an adulterous relationship destined to fail.

Acts that feature brothers in singer-songwriter rolls range from the generally harmonious (the Avetts, the Allmans pre-Duane’s passing) to the radically dysfunctional (the Kinks’ Davies brothers and Oasis’ Gallagher siblings) and somewhere in-between (Jesus and Mary Chain’s Reid’s on again/off again relationship). The Wood Brothers seem to fall into the first category as they release album number six

The ninth studio album from Calexico, The Thread That Keeps Us is a timely snapshot of the Arizona-bred band: a family portrait capturing their stylistic variety and unpredictability while still finding solace in limitless creativity. In bringing the album to life, vocalist/guitarist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino found a spiritual home in unusual surroundings—not in Arizona, but on the Northern California coast