“Think of everyone you hurt, starting with yourself,” sings Tim Easton on his latest album, Find Your Way, his voice expertly seasoned by the nearly three decades of his journeyman career. He repeats the refrain like a call and response: […]
When was the last time Ani DiFranco got weird with her music? After the free-flowing eclecticism of her 2003 record Evolve, DiFranco settled into a comfortable, acoustic-folk groove. With the release of Unprecedented Sh!t, her 23rd album, she shakes things […]
The feet are the same, but there’s a new voice above them. For Sam’s Place, Little Feat’s first studio album in 12 years, they bring conga player Sam Clayton to the mic for the whole session. Clayton has been in […]
With their latest and self-titled LP, The Avett Brothers offer earnest and wistfully philosophic songs set within well-polished soundscapes. Continuing to mine the light-pop and folk-rock MO honed on their major-label debut, 2009’s I and Love and You, the band […]
Muddy Waters once told a 19-year-old Rick Estrin he had that sound. “You playing like a man, boy!,” Waters said as Estrin sat in with his band in Chicago. “I know that sound when I hear it, that’s my sound!” […]
Pokey LaFarge displays such easy grace when he sings that it’s tempting to consider him a supplier of light entertainment. Don’t believe it. The stirring, deceptively fraught Rhumba Country presents vivid vignettes of restless hearts gripped by desire and loneliness, […]
The Moon Is in the Wrong Place, the new album from Shannon and the Clams, is a different one than it might have been under other circumstances. Before recording, frontwoman Shannon Shaw’s fiance, a good friend to all of the […]
Adopting James Brown’s mantle as Soul Brother No. 1 for an album title is a ballsy move. But it quickly becomes apparent that on his latest project, The Reverend Shawn Amos is not trying to subvert Brown’s legacy or sound, […]
Rockers. Love ballads. Tragedies and picket songs. They’re all here on Adeem the Artist’s Anniversary. Recorded over five days with Butch Walker and a slate of Nashville’s finest, Anniversary is Adeem’s follow-up to 2022’s White Trash Revelry (ND story), which […]
Nobody blends groove and gravitas quite like Chris Smither. The folk-blues master leads off his new album with the title song, “All About the Bones.” Over a seductive mid-tempo rhythm burnished by his own deftly picked guitar, Chris Cheek’s late-night […]
