Randall Bramblett is a dreamcatcher of sorts. He captures images from the airy vaults where they recline, waiting to be downloaded by sensitive souls like him. Of course, translating them into a musical format requires some shapeshifting, so he blends […]
Pair up guitarists JD Simo and Luther Dickinson, and you can expect some sludge to get splashed around. The mix of Simo’s Chicago-by-way-of-Nashville licks and Dickinson’s hill country fuzz whip up a muddy cauldron of stickyfoot stomp. The selections reflect […]
The Americana gods must have been smiling down on Sophie Gault when they crossed her stars with award-winning producer Ray Kennedy, known for his work on Lucinda Williams’ seminal Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Steve Earle’s Transcendental Blues, […]
If Sleater-Kinney and David Bowie wrote a song in the Arizona desert, the result might sound like Hataałii’s “Something’s in the Air.” “Hand in hand should see it through / Oh, I got some news for you,” Hataałii sings over […]
Willie Watson has always operated on the periphery. Even in the making of his own story. First, he was harmonizing on early versions of “Wagon Wheel” in high school, as a founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show. After he left […]
Thirty years after their debut single – and four since their last album – Nada Surf is back. Their new album, Moon Mirror, is their first on New West Records. Appropriate to their new label, the band includes some touches […]
There was a homespun quality to Boat Songs, the 2022 album that won Asheville, NC-based singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman an unexpected avalanche of critical praise and hype. That time around, Lenderman came across as a natural-yet-iconoclastic Gen Z update to the […]
Amy Helm dwells in the songs she writes, turning her phrases and words in and out. She delivers little masterpieces of folk and soul that plumb the depths of human emotion. On Silver City, her fourth album, Helm tells the […]
Jagged earth under warped tires, the air whipping through open windows, the heart that beats along to the car stereo – all of it changes, forced to weather the seasons and evolve. In this life, change is the one constant, […]
Sometimes, even after a period of fruitful reinvention, it helps to go back to the root of the thing. The Deslondes, one of the most consistent bands putting out music today, are doing just that with their latest release, Roll […]
