Paul Thorn opens his new album, Life Is Just A Vapor, with a terse but timely sermon. “Tough times don’t last, tough people do,” the 60-year-old Tupelo, Miss., native sings over a loping, horn-accented R&B groove. Then he goes […]
The world is an alarming, scary place right now. But if you’re looking to escape the turmoil, Sunny War is the last person to turn to. Fiery and blunt, this eloquent singer-songwriter delivers powerful broadsides intended to keep the […]
It may have taken Patterson Hood a dozen years to get it out, but Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams was well worth the wait. The Drive-By Truckers co-founder is no stranger to making solo records—this is his fourth—but none […]
Somewhere in his native South Carolina, the Oregon-based Cuchulain—who makes music under that mononym—met his someone special. Still fresh-faced and young, they stayed up late all summer, getting wasted to college radio: “Rolled in the grass in late July […]
Scottish singer songwriter Dean Owens lives up to his ‘Celtic Americana’ moniker having frequently collaborated across the Atlantic. Most notable are his partnerships with Will Kimbrough and Neilson Hubbard followed by his two most recent albums with Calexico in […]
Chatham Rabbits is another in a long line of husband-and-wife folk duos that stretches back to at least The Carter Family, but, more than most, the music the couple makes seems tied to their life partnership as much as […]
On their fourth album, Plus One, The War and Treaty transport us into the sonic stratosphere from the album’s opening track, “Love Like Whiskey,” and never let us down as they carry us through the yearnings, the dashed expectations, […]
For Ron Pope, American Man, American Music is as advertised. The album even kicks off with Pope singing a jaunty bro country-inflected song about picking up “a brown-skinned doll” in Panama. The song swaggers with an easy-going attitude even as […]
Los Angeles outfit The Altons has been a key player in the Chicano soul revival that’s been happening on the West Coast for the past decade or so. With its newest LP Heartache in Room 14, The Altons are […]
Tommy Castro could have been a successful soulman. He’s got the grit of Little Milton or Bobby Blue Bland embedded in his vocals and has the extra attraction of being able to throw in his own guitar licks fit […]
