Category: What We’re Into – Recent Interest

Young’s voice, an acquired taste for more than half a century, sounds exactly as it did when he excoriated the killing of Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young classic “Ohio.” His intensity has only grown since, as you can hear on “Help Me Lose My Mind,”

The overarching theme of The Wanting is Cody’s personal struggles with inner demons and the rigors of stardom. Isn’t it refreshing when so much of modern country involves braggadocios self-aggrandization that Cody Jinks is willing to speak unflinchingly about his fears and vulnerabilities?

Two Hands is a showcase for all of Big Thief’s instruments, recorded raw and closeup. But Lenker’s undecorated voice is the most arresting of them all as it swoops from whisper to cry. On the writhing lead single Not, she sings each bruised word with real pain on the line “It’s not the hunger revealing…

Those who know Olsen from the stripped-down intimacy of Burn Your Fire For No Witness may be startled by the near-Björkian-grandeur on display here — although her 2016 My Woman clearly showed an artist whose trajectory had yet to be fully measured. Here, songs alternate vast orchestral landscapes with similarly-cinematic band tracks,