At the end of his new record, Born Against, Amigo the Devil — also known as songwriter and musician Danny Kiranos — sings, “When the darkness of the tunnel is the last place I go, you’re the closest thing to […]
Calla Lily, the sophomore album from The Brother Brothers, opens with a song that expresses what is undoubtedly a shared sentiment amongst musicians at this point. “On the Road Again” captures that unmistakable itch to get back to touring life, […]
When Todd Snider formed the Hard Working Americans, his aim was to merge the jamband ethos with that of the singer-songwriter tradition he came out of, putting a new emphasis on the instrumental aspects of his songs. One of the […]
The Ladles new album — Springville Sessions — is “nice.” I don’t mean to damn it with faint praise by using such a mealy-mouthed term, but that is the word that kept entering my mind as I listened. There is nothing […]
Any album by Merry Clayton is reason to celebrate. Clayton, whose soaring and defiant vocals on the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” conveyed the raw, visceral emotion of the song and launched it into the sonic stratosphere, returns with her first […]
For timely relief from modern problems, you can’t top Dance Songs for Hard Times, the electrifying new long player from Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band. Although this Indiana-spawned combo was already well versed in tales of life on the edge […]
Recorded during the lockdown at a rural studio near Dublin, Ireland, where Rhiannon Giddens and her partner, Francesco Turrisi, have been riding out the pandemic, They’re Calling Me Home is, without reservation, her finest work to date. Intimately recorded and […]
There must be something in the air in Athens, Georgia — it has produced a long line of prolific artists and rock bands. R.E.M., Vic Chesnutt, Drive-By Truckers, the B-52s, and now, The Pink Stones, a six-piece outfit creating some […]
At the age of 85, after six-plus decades in the music business — including numerous collaborations with Ewan MacColl, to whom she was married from 1977 until his death in 1989 — Peggy Seeger releases her 24th solo album, First […]
Fresh off the release of her wonderful LP A Small Death last year (ND story here), Samantha Crain has given us a handful of affecting new songs on her new EP, I Guess We Live Here Now. While the former […]
