Most often what we’re seeking in music is inspiration — that spark of being brought to life by a sound, a lyric, a song. Ben Lee’s new record has it from the very start of the opening track, when a […]
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An album of timeworn standards was probably inevitable eventually for the Innocence Mission, given that singer Karen Peris distinctive imprint of a voice and husband Don Peris talent for guitar-textured moodscapes makes the band ideally suited for interpretive excursions. Think […]
Our last note in this space not surprisingly spurred a range of reactions among our readers, as is reflected in this issue’s letters section. Some folks agreed with us; many others disagreed; some offered a different perspective on the matter […]
It’s so succinct and sweet that it goes by in the blink of an eye, the title track of Hem’s new disc, Eveningland. Clocking in at 1 minute and 1 second, it begins with the lonesome drone of a clarinet, […]
What makes the music of “outsider” singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston so singular is that unlike most outsider art, which is deemed such because it blows apart or bypasses traditional forms and structures, Johnston’s songs are in fact often remarkably solid models […]
The lion’s share of attention has gone to the two-disc model on Or Music, but another Alejandro Escovedo tribute album was recently assembled by an assortment of Canadian artists. Escovedo 101 is a much smaller-scale affair than its American counterpart, […]
The bouncy, bluesy jazz of the first track “Pony” notwithstanding, Wayward Angel finds Kasey Chambers, Australia’s #1 import to Americana music in recent years, working pretty much the same territory as on her first two releases. That’s a good thing, […]
Of the half-dozen records the Old 97’s have made over the past decade, “Drag It Up is our most personal,” guitarist Ken Bethea writes in a brief band biography that accompanied press mailings of the group’s new disc. He’s right […]
It was just before 2pm on Sunday afternoon that a seismic shift very nearly overtook Merlefest in its 17th year. On the far corner of the festival grounds at Wilkes Community College in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains […]
I recall an evening, a good while before this magazine came into existence, in which my future co-editor and I were discussing the status of a local music rag that was in the midst of troubled times, and how it […]
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