Todd Snider was on a creative roll when he recorded a new album in 2007. It was called Crank It, We’re Doomed, and for some reason the mercurial singer-songwriter decided to shelve it, though several tracks would wind up on […]
It might sound like the stuff of mythmaking, but Jon Dee Graham died for a moment a few years ago. He passed out after a long set at festival in the hot summer sun, coming back to life thanks to […]
What counts as “classic country” music today is very much an eye-of-the-beholder sort of thing, but for a great many people, artists like Vincent Neil Emerson truly fit the bill. An Indigenous American with Choctaw-Apache lineage, Emerson is steeped in […]
For his latest album, Reflector, Daniel Donato leaves it all on the floor. From the first notes and for more than a full hour, he never lets up for even a second, spinning fiery instrumental arrangements into a blissful tizzy. […]
Laura Veirs’ newest album, Phone Orphans, was written between 2016 and 2022, a time period of immense change that upended much of the world as we knew it: two hugely consequential presidential elections, a pandemic, and a war in Europe. […]
On Current, Danielle Howle displays her expertise at capturing music’s spirit. That’s not a vague cliché. Howle opens her album with the lyrics “Why’d I let all of that outta my mouth / Don’t you know I feel insane?” While […]
On her previous two albums, Suzy Bogguss wrapped her warm, crystalline, and sometimes hard-edged vocals around familiar American folk and pop songs ( 2011’s American Folk Songbook) and the songs of Merle Haggard (2014’s Lucky). On her new album, Prayin’ […]
“Planes,” the opening track on The Falcon Ate the Flower, Lee Gallagher’s third album with his band The Hallelujah, musically exists somewhere between inventive prog rock and a psychedelic jam worthy of the late ‘60s San Francisco scene. Piano lines […]
With Gold on the Horizon, Alex Ellis, a.k.a. Our Man in the Field, builds on the lyrical proficiency and vocal depth displayed on his 2020 debut, The Company of Strangers. Frequently addressing the prerequisite subjects of love and heartache, Ellis […]
Colin Cutler’s life has many threads: a former Pentecostal Christian, a military veteran, a troubadour who bummed rides across Europe, and a community college instructor, it all leads to one magnificent tapestry of roots music on Tarwater. The album is […]
