New Releases Archive

This special 40th anniversary edition of the Red Cross EP, which includes the band’s six-song eponymous debut and adds five contemporaneous extra tracksRead More »

As on Porches’ previous records, mastermind Aaron Maine brings in collaborators to help broaden the sound of Ricky Music—and this time it shows more than it has in the past.Read More »

The Mastersons are singer-songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore. Longtime members of Steve Earle’s band the Dukes, the musical and marital twosome make inspired albums of their own vivid, deeply humanistic songs.Read More »

On RESIST!, Chicago's original punk cowboys, The Waco Brothers, play protest songs about the folks getting shoved down, and songs about the system that’s doing the shoving. The band’s 25-year songbook remains alarmingly relevant.Read More »

Industrial noise rages over pummelling bass, a leaden drum pattern thuds, her breathy vocals keep threatening to sound euphoric – beginning to spiral upwards as the song reaches its chorus before pulling back to somewhere darker and more discomfiting.Read More »

Tame Impala, AKA 34-year-old Australian Kevin Parker, started out in 2010 as a home-recording, guitar-wielding psychedelic rocker but 2015’s Currents cemented his metamorphosis into an arena-filling synth-psych act whose tunes are covered by Rihanna and Arctic Monkeys.Read More »

Ultimately, it is a pleasure to hear Scott-Heron’s voice – whether in scratchy falsetto or in soliloquising baritone – and McCraven’s rearranging, often minimizing instrumentation, pays beautiful homage to it.Read More »

This eighth Wood Brothers studio album may be the most fully integrated record in their discography, certainly as much so as the first releases with the sibling as a duo. That sound of Oliver and Chris singing together in close harmonyRead More »

Bill Fay’s albums for Deram Records made in 1970 and 1971 and deleted shortly afterwards – got new life after endorsements from the likes of Jim O’Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) led to a huge revival of interest in this vanished artist.Read More »

The first Who album in 13 years opens with a perfectly cynical Pete Townshend lyric: “I don’t care/I know you’re gonna hate this song.” But it’s kind of hard to hate something that feels so familiar. Roger Daltrey sings the lyric and the ones that follow, claiming the song isn’tRead More »

After finishing You Want It Darker, which was released just 19 days before his death in 2016, aged 82, Leonard Cohen still wanted to add to his tower of song. Thus, he kept on writing and recording as life ebbed away,Read More »

With their second album, simply titled The Band and released in 1969, the quintet – Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson – basically invented modern Americana, tying their inherent musicality to a sound and aesthetic rooted in century-old historyRead More »

Her new album, Magdalene, invokes Mary of Magdala as a kind of apostle of the overlooked. It’s a breakup album, written in a period of upheaval not only limited to the artist’s romantic life.  Magdalene is an effortless braiding of high-brow electronic art-pop, carnal soul music, and lurid modern dance,Read More »

A solo concert from Keith Jarrett - recorded at Munich’s Philharmonic Hall on July 16, 2016, on the last night of a tour - finds the great improvising pianist at a peak of invention. Creating a spontaneous suite of forms in the moment with the intuitive assurance of a master builder – interspersing touches of the blues and folksong lyricism between pieces of polyrhythmic and harmonic complexityRead More »

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,"Read More »

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?Read More »

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 / Not the ricochet in the cave”, before filling up the space her words evoke with a howling guitar solo.Read More »

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,Read More »

Ever since Sturgill Simpson was anointed the second coming of Seventies country with his 2014 release, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, the 41-year-old Kentucky Navy vet has spent the past half-decade making a show of his discomfort with any such label. Simpson followed up that career-making record withRead More »

Eleven albums in as many years suggest MC Taylor has no issues with writers’ block, that he must be in a constant state of productivity. Yet Terms of Surrender arrived not through clarity,Read More »

The groundbreaking indie-noise-experimental stalwarts Stereolab continue their reissue campaign with three of their prime-period albums. The wide-ranging, devilishly melodic Cobra & Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky NightRead More »

On "‘Neon Brown’, Velvet Negroni is a griot relaying the life and times of his own island - it’s a singular place, with the squeak and thrum of guitar strings looped over drum machine beats accented by steely marimbas, all creating a pocket forRead More »

In WB Yeats’ most famous line, “things fall apart, the center cannot hold." Things were pretty bad when he wrote that in 1919, the first world war segueing smoothly into the Irish war of independence, but Sleater-Kinney twist the line into something even worse.Read More »

Bandana, the new joint release by Freddie Gibbs and Madib, is weirder, more freewheeling, more Madlib-y than its predecessor. Gibbs remains unphased; he fields each beat like Omar Vizquel and splits it down the middle with raw charisma, torrential flows, and economic, impactful writing.Read More »

Thom Yorke describes his excellent new solo album Anima as “dystopian,” which isn’t exactly the hugest surprise in the world. With or without Radiohead, he’s spent his whole career mapping out the dystopia we’re living in—he does futuristic apocalypse the way John Fogerty does choogle.Read More »

Long live David Berman. After shutting it all down in a 2009 message board post, the mythic musician’s project Silver Jews took on an indie cult status so strong he almost resented taking a full decade off from making music. But now he’s returned with a new name and the same dark outlook.Read More »

Gov’t Mule celebrate their silver jubilee with Bring on the Music – Live at the Capitol Theatre. The iconic band covers many of its bases here by buffeting the blues of Blind Willie JohnsonRead More »

Rather than stray in different directions this time, Lauderdale reunited with the team behind Time Flies, co-producer bassist Jay Weaver and GrammyAward-winning engineer David Leonard (Prince, John Mellencamp). He also stayed in the groove of writing solo and with vaunted co-writersRead More »

The California country-tinged, cinematic endeavor sees the Boss reflecting, embracing the dark corners of his mind while introducing a slew of West Coast personas and an army of strings and horns. Springsteen has long been a master of nostalgia and here he shifts his sonic touch points back to the sounds that floated through his early years,Read More »

Neil Young can be irascible at the best of times, but things were looking particularly dour when he and his band The Stray Gators rolled into Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in February 1973. Though his 1972 release Harvest was the top-selling album in America that year, Young was not in a celebratory mood.Read More »

The band that started it all, Superchunk, is back with a surprise new studio album! Acoustic Foolish is a complete re-recording of their classic 1994 album, Foolish,. Long considered to be one of their most tender & well-received albums in their storied history, the band was interested in re-exploring what the songs mean to them 25 years later.Read More »

The second Lowe/Los Straitjackets studio collaboration EP features only four selections, running a total of 14 minutes. Three are new Lowe originals that, well, sound like others of his tunes, and the fourth, “Raincoat In The River,” is an obscure Phil Spector cover, initially recorded by the little known Sammy Turner.Read More »

This is the funkiest record of Mac DeMarco’s career, with its serene charm and more introspective songs proving its creator now cares less about what will play well on the festival stages and more about letting us inside his head. The record is paced slower than his previous work, with the coked-out synths ofRead More »

Over the course of their previous two albums, New York foursome Big Thief pruned their meaty alt-rock back into mellow indie. UFOF sees them pare things down further still, in a collection of gentle folk that seems dazed by its own exquisite beauty. Sometimes, the results bring to mind a sugar-coated Elliott Smith: acutely lovely melodies are layered over beds of softly hypnotic guitar,Read More »

It shouldn’t bother anyone that Kelly Finnigan, frontman for the Bay Area-based Monophonics, has decided to throw his solo hat into the retro soul ring. It’s akin to another Democrat running for the party’s nomination for president in 2020. Sure, the field is a little crowded, but an additional point of view is welcome to make things more interesting.Read More »

Through their first three albums, The Yawpers divined a signature style—what Pitchfork described as “an expansive vision of rock ‘n’ roll, one that cherrypicks from various folk traditions: punk, rockabilly, blues, whatever they might have on hand or find in the trash.” The sound is a front-heavy, groovy, fire & brimstone punk-blues overlying a dynamic and metaphysical roots rock. On their fourth album Human Question, the Denver trio zooms out to a more vast and accessible stylistic and spiritual universe.Read More »

The Budos Band have spent the last 15 years slowly-but-surely adding elements of proto-metal to their groove-drenched instrumental Afrobeat. 2014’s Burnt Offering feels like a confession of sorts, the band copping to their stoned-teenager proclivities by giving the album a grim title, artwork depicting aRead More »

Old soul practitioners who are still alive, well and touring are getting mighty scarce these days. In the last few years, we’ve lost Aretha, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, to name a few. That leaves Al Green, Aaron Neville, Mavis Staples and …. Lee Fields, plus some others, to keep that gritty spark alive, at least for those artists fortunate enough to be exposed to the raw, roots testifying of icons like Otis Redding,Read More »

It was inevitable that Steve Earle would eventually pay tribute to one of two his major mentors, Guy Clark, having done the same for Townes Van Zandt ten years ago. On Guy, Earle and his newly recast band, The Dukes, deliver 16 Clark tunes, both the well-known and relatively obscure in heartfelt, admirable style. As Earle says, “No way I could get out of doing this record."Read More »

Astrologists apparently believe the annual “Strawberry Moon” (christened not for any red color but because it appears around the time the fruit is harvested) signals a time of transition. It’s an appropriate name then for this unusual collaborative project helmed by blues-based artist Luther Dickinson. The guitarist/producer convened six female roots-based musician/vocalistsRead More »

"Rushing the Acid Frat" kicks off a side of songs where the synths are accouterments to guitars instead of the other way around. These five songs are prime Malkmus -- lovely, off-kilter pop graced with off-hand lyricism evident in both the lyrics and melody. If he needed to go through the stilted robotic futurism of "Belziger Faceplant" to get to this suite of songs, the whole enterprise was worth the experimentation.Read More »

It’s taken Patty Griffin more than 20 years and nearly a dozen albums to issue a self-titled release. There may be no particular reason for the designation, but considering its intensely meditative character, her recently-revealed successful battle with cancer and her dedication to besieged causes like refugees and the environment, it seems like a deliberate choice.Read More »

Born from collective writing sessions and improvisation, Cochemea Gastelum’s “All My Relations” delivers nothing short of a transcendent jazz experience. Blended with indigenous-influenced rhythms,Read More »

Led by married couple Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Tedeschi Trucks Band formed back in 2010. Based in Jacksonville, Florida the band, which currently consists of 12 members, released debut album Revelator in 2011. Fusing Blues, Soul, R&B and Americana Signs sees Tedeschi Trucks Band continuing to forge their own path in music.Read More »

Sunshine Rock, Bob Mould’s latest, shows him continuing to rock hard, very much in the tradition of 2016’s Patch the Sky, but with interesting production moves that give the new album some sonic variety. Mould, now living in Berlin, is best known for being one-third of the seminal alternative band, Hüsker Dü.Read More »

After dedicating all of last year to the release and support of one (just one) album, the late-career masterpiece Space Gun, Robert Pollard and his gang plan on upping the ante for 2019 with three LP’s and a slew of EP’s on tap. This is standard operating procedure for Pollard though.Read More »

The only antidote for the hell-in-a-handbasket blues is the stankiest of funks, and no one makes it stankier than George Clinton. The good doctor is here to prescribe Medicaid Fraud Dogg, the first album in 38 years from Parliament, the P-Funk empire's more soulful outfit.Read More »

Whereas Deerhunter’s music always felt like receiving distant transmissions from some far away time and place, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? disarms with a striking clarity. Hypnotic melodies swirl as Cox’s voice fills the forefront while the rhythm section, anchored by longtime members Lockett PundtRead More »

On his new live album, Bruce Springsteen is spoken-word poet, standup comedian, evangelical preacher, and performer all rolled into one. The New Jersey rockstar has always been sure to give fans plenty of The Boss for their buck over the past 45 years – with concerts that regularly exceed three hours.Read More »

Commencing The Prophet Speaks with a lighthearted “Gonna Send You Back To Where I Got You From.” Van, Joey et. al., pick right up where they left off, romping into action with sly singing from the author of “Brown-eyed Girl,” the sure rhythm of drummer Michael Ode and a pithy guitar break by Dan Wilson.Read More »

This is the 18th album Jeff Tweedy has made as a principal player – with Uncle Tupelo, with Wilco, with his elder son (as Tweedy) and solo. It is a testament to his restless creativity that he’s still making worthwhile music, still twisting familiar elements into appealing shapes. The perfectionism and obsession of the middle Wilco years are a thing of the past.Read More »

While it's hardly a concept record, Mark Knopfler builds his own miniature village on Down The Road Wherever, and the details with which he colors his cast make it easy to imagine his many characters living among each other. Knopfler's characters feel neither autobiographical nor entirely fictional, thanks in large part to his apparent knack for understanding the human condition.Read More »

Black Velvet is the fourth and final album from the late, great soul singer Charles Bradley, and this 10-track album is a celebration of the life of the singer who would have turned 70 this past Monday, November 5, and was lovingly assembled by his friends and family.Read More »

The latest chapter in Columbia/Legacy’s highly acclaimed Bob Dylan Bootleg Series makes available the pivotal studio recordings made by Bob Dylan during six extraordinary sessions in 1974—four in New York (September 16, 17, 18, 19) and two in Minneapolis (December 27, 30)—that resulted in the artist’s 1975 masterpiece, Blood on the Tracks.Read More »

Butcher Brown are a group who just seem to leap forward more and more with each new release – and who've really hit their groove with this well-recorded performance. The album was recorded live to disc in London – with a superb sound that only further emphasizes the sharp instrumentation that make these guys way more than just another funky combo.Read More »

Songs of Love and Horror is a rare entry in the oeuvre of Will Oldham: a Will Oldham album, with the writer taking a turn as singer. As befits the nature of this project, the songs are sung and played by Will alone, in a setting enjoyed by fans of his music — that of one voice and one guitar,Read More »

Best of all is his decision to let four songs wander up to, and sometimes over, the 10-minute mark – this amplifies the bean-baggy vibe, and lets Vile’s idling poetry really find its slacker voice. It also allows room, on Skinny Mini, for two great guitar solos, where jazzy improvisation turns into big fuzz chords,Read More »

Chan Marshall’s career is solitary and self-sustaining like few others. With barely more than her voice and a guitar, she has built a rich and variable universe spanning an array of moodsRead More »

An American Treasure is a a career-spanning 60-track deluxe set unveils dozens of previously unreleased recordings, alternate versions of classic songs, rarities, historic live performances and deep tracks that spotlight Tom's remarkable depth and evolution as a revered and tremendously influential songwriterRead More »

Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers formed Adam’s House Cat in the Muscles Shoals area of Alabama in 1985. Their songs and friendship became the foundation on which DBT was built. Their one and only “lost” album from 1990 was remixed by David Barbe, mastered by Greg Calbi and is now available for the first timeRead More »

Escovedo is too much of a veteran and established pro to get bogged down pushing some convoluted narrative in lieu of quality songwriting. Rather these 17 tracks examine the hot-button political topic of immigration; telling of two men, one from Mexico,Read More »

A sad record isn’t always the easiest to get into, but that tends to be from just how emotionally visceral they are. While it’s not the most complex release from Waxahatchee in recent memory, there’s so much packed in to her words that it wildly overshadows what any additional instrumentation could offer.Read More »

For fans of Iron & Wine, it’s Christmas in August. “Weed Garden” is a six-track EP including songs written by Sam Beam mostly while working toward his last full album, “Beast Epic,” and they sound very much like it.Read More »

It’s ironic that The Devil Makes Three score their biggest successes with solid showings on the bluegrass charts. Although their earlier efforts found them extolling a kind of swampy, roots-relevant approach,Read More »

Vocalist and main songwriter Justin Furstenfeld is in a happy place in his personal life being a proud and doting dad judging by his various social media posts. This is reflected in the album’s general upbeat air in the music which is a mixture of rock, dance, 80′s influences, indie, pop and more. The title track and ‘How To Dance In Time’ are the album’s lead songs, both have wonderfully uplifting melodies and emotive lyrics.Read More »

With SHOOTER, Jennings truly puts his own mark on country music, living up to his extraordinary birthright with unparalleled passion, experience, and heart. Jennings’ decade-plus relationship with the GRAMMY® Award-winning Cobb extends all the way back to 2005 and his first trio of solo albums.Read More »

Time Flies is an awe-inspiring demonstration of versatility, enough to fill several volumes and not merely be contained by a single one. The rest of the record finds Lauderdale dwelling on other enterprise as well, from the mournful title track to the tale about the scene-stealing shuckster detailed in “Wearing Out Your Cool”Read More »

The self-produced Out Of The Blues finds national treasure Boz Scaggs applying his iconic voice and gritty guitar skills to a set of vintage classics as well as four originals. For the occasion, the legendary singer/songwriter/guitarist assembled a star-studded studio band including such prestigious players as guitarists Doyle Bramhall II, Ray Parker Jr. and Charlie Sexton,Read More »

Rodney Crowell doesn’t NEED to revisit a dozen of his signature tracks, as he does on Acoustic Classics, to stay relevant. But in doing so, he’s provided new insights into the versatility and timeless nature of his songwriting and interpretative skills.Read More »

The spinechillingly emotional saxophonist Albert Ayler said of his 1960s contemporaries John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders: “Trane was the father. Pharoah was the son. I was the holy ghost.” That sax triumvirate have many heirs (notably Kamasi Washington), but the spiritually restless Coltrane will always be theRead More »

On Heaven and Earth, Washington continues to explore a sweet spot between artistry and approachability. Whether his success will lead audiences to further explore music that usually exists on the fringes is an interesting question. What is more certain is the quality and accessibility of his own music. Heaven and Earth feels writhingly alive and passionate, angrily of the moment but inclusive.Read More »

Former R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and often-experimental singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur have teamed up for an album that was written mostly in a few days after a chance encounter in Mexico and recorded nearly as quickly. Fresh and spontaneous, it's also filled with precious sonic details, like little flashes sparking the songs. Unsurprisingly, Buck's layers of acoustic guitars and bright and brief solos provide numerous R.E.M. texturesRead More »

This late into the age of confessional songwriting, when even the most bubblegum of artists trouble the Top 40 with TMI, it’s rare to find an album that can startle you with its cat-out-of-the-bag bluntness.Read More »

When Neko Case’s house burned down in 2017, her local newspaper invaded her privacy to a degree that made her fear the return of the stalker she had recently bankrupted herself to defeat. The journalist publicized her furious, private response, which told her something about how women’s life stories are stolen from them, how quickly their anger is spun as hysteria.Read More »

There's a tension in Joshua Redman's new album, Still Dreaming, and it may not be the one that you expect. For the last couple of years, Redman, a saxophonist within jazz's first tier of prominence, has led an agile post-bop group with Ron Miles on cornet, Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums.Read More »

Now a bona fide indie-rock heroine, Barnett has made a second LP that occasionally recalls her early come-to-Yeezus session. Tell Me How You Really Feel is noisy and way more pissed off than her 2015 debut, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, unsheathing sharp new earnestness alongside her trademark sabers of sarcasm and penetrating observation.Read More »

Alex Turner has taken his muse off into space – the moon, specifically. It’s an awe-inspiring place, somewhat despoiled by humans and their need to build hotel-cum-casinos near the Sea of Tranquility. If you’ve been to Niagara Falls, you’ll have a flavour. There’s a taqueria on the roof, too, scoring four stars out of five (“and that’s unheard-of”, vamps Turner).Read More »

How do you stare down the fact that your days are numbered? That’s the question hovering over the latest album from country legend Willie Nelson. The soon-to-be 85-year-old has watched all the artists that inspired him and nearly all those who were part of his outlaw posse make their final transitions. Sad, yes, but a dull inevitability. Rather than lament his fate, Nelson is facing it with the same humor,Read More »

From the opening licks of "Bad Habit" to the closing notes of "Family Tree," you can feel the energy pulsing through the new Black Stone Cherry album. "Bad Habit" may be one of the best tracks exemplifying their fully fleshed out swagger.Read More »

Let us all rejoice, the might John Prine, master of understatement, walks among us again! A new album from John Prine is always reason to celebrate, but an album in which he wrote or co-wrote all the songs is an even bigger reason to rejoice. The Tree of Forgiveness is the first album since 2005’s Fair & Square where Prine has written the songs.Read More »

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 ofRead More »

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;Read More »

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.Read More »

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.Read More »

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.Read More »

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,Read More »

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.Read More »

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.Read More »

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 sixRead More »

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 coastRead More »

After 10 years producing and recording albums for Brooklyn Rider and Yo-Yo Ma's Silkroad Ensemble, Johnny Gandelsman releases a debut solo album. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo are a magnificent repertoire for Gandelsman's interpretations, which draw on his experiences with Silkroad, Brooklyn Rider, dance and non-classical musicians to add rich layers to Bach's music. It's an epic feat to attempt, but Gandelsman has created a mesmerizing, memorable marathon here, brimming with genial freshness and unaffected sincerity.Read More »

Winning Hand, the new album from Tinsley Ellis on Alligator Records, is the veteran bluesman at his finest as a songwriter and guitarist. The epic six-minute slow blues “Gamblin’ Man” is alone worth the price, but the album is packed with hard-hitting, groove-driven electric blues. In the very first track an unexpected key change introduces a wailing guitar solo that brings Jimi Hendrix to mind, and throughout the album Ellis’s titanic, elemental solos cut like a leopard’s fangs.Read More »

The fifth NERD album charged into view with a ferocious lead-off single, Lemon, its relentless, speedy beat playing host to both a guest appearance from Rihanna and a sample from a YouTube video of rapper Retch shouting out to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X while smoking a joint amid a crowd of baffled-looking white pensioners. No One Ever Really Dies boasts a gripping, consistent sound behind its plethora of high-profile cameos.Read More »

A timeless yet specific reflection on empathy and loss, Sufjan Stevens' 2015 album Carrie & Lowell stripped away many of the singer's flourishes to reveal something barren and reverent, compassionate and utterly human. Writing in the wake of his mother's death, Stevens used Carrie & Lowell to grapple with their fraught and often absent relationship, only to locate pathways to empathy and forgiving kindness.Read More »

Few would have predicted Chris Stapleton's dominance earlier this decade, but he's commanded the spotlight for long enough now — through show-stealing televised performances, major awards show wins and enviable album sales —to bring what it is about him that people are responding to into focus. The 39-year-old Kentucky native relies on Dave Cobb, Nashville's leading studio naturalist, to capture the leathery twang and blues-basted analog brawn of his power trio, in which it falls upon Stapleton to supply both sinewy rhythm guitar and snarling lead licksRead More »

The last material we heard from Björk was a bit of downer, wasn’t it? 2015’s ‘Vulnicura’ was a sweeping, majestic break-up album that saw her creating a raw, emotive narrative within her otherworldly soundscapes. It was incredible, but damn it was gloomy. Happily, the febrile ‘Utopia’ sees her on more upbeat – but no less creative – form, coming on like new age titan Enya if she signed to Hyperdub,Read More »

When Sharon Jones died of pancreatic cancer last year, the world lost its greatest exponent of vintage soul; that she'd first hit her stride in the '00s with the revivalist, detail-obsessed Daptone label, made the accomplishment all the more striking. Recorded over her last two years with longtime sidemen, genre-masters all, Jones meets darkness with hope on this denouement. "A Matter of Time" envisions world peace; "Come and Be a Winner" is a funky pep talk.Read More »

Indie queen Angel Olsen has come a long way from her days as part of the Cairo Gang; her legion of fervid fans steadily growing with each subsequent release. It’s a trajectory that mirrors the evolution of Olsen’s sound—and the size of her band—from the stark, indie-folk of 2012’s Strange Cacti, to the expansive, swirling soundscapes of last year’s My Woman. It was My Woman—with Olsen trying on everything from synthy, dream-pop (“Intern”) to Rumours-era Stevie Nicks (“Sister”) and realizing they all fit perfectlyRead More »

Tragic love, drug abuse, science fiction, and Americana: Blitzen Trapper managed to squeeze all that, and more, into their rock opera, Wild and Reckless, which was produced for the stage in their hometown of Portland, Ore., earlier this year. But that wasn't enough for frontman Eric Earley and crew. Taking seven of the songs from the play and fleshing them out with five new numbers, they assembled an album of the same name.Read More »

The 22-year-old songwriter Julien Baker sees this not so much as an impossibility as a challenge to reconcile, daring her to make music in which she turns herself inside out. Her songs are sparse, internally focused, and radically intimate. “I know that you don’t understand, ’cause you don’t believe what you don’t see,” she sings on “Shadowboxing,” a particularly arresting song off her new album, Turn Out the Lights. Baker’s songs are relentlessly sad but bleakly hopeful, if only for the reason that, if we are listening to them,Read More »