by Nick DeRiso First off, this doesn’t start off with any piano, but also not the churchy wistfulness of the Cowboy Junkies’ 1987 breakthrough The Trinity Session. Instead, there is a gnarled electric guitar from Michael Timmins, a mashed-down organ […]
by Nick DeRiso With a voice that’s axiomatically compared with winged messengers from God, Aaron Neville‘s gospel records ought to form the cornerstone of his resume, right? Instead, the New Orleans singing legend’s two previous attempts felt too forced, like […]
by Nick DeRiso This was, I always thought, the record that Boz Scaggs should have been making. Come On Home is a rocking, rib-sticking roux of blues, R&B and soul in small-band configurations. Scaggs might add some horns, but that’s […]
By Mark Saleski This story travels a bizarre triangle from Portland, Maine to San Diego, California to Houston, Texas. To be honest, there’s nothing particularly exciting about either the story or the music, but it illustrates just how big the […]
by Mark Saleski In the recent Southern Music issue of the Oxford American, musician John Engle speaks of “The Vastness,” the idea that the world’s store of knowledge is so vast that “if you tried to take it all on […]
by Nick DeRiso While much of Tony Joe White‘s 2010 recording “The Shine” feels so bare-bones as to be undercooked, the muscular “Tell Me Why” bubbles up with the rough moral drama of a storyteller’s yarn. Still standing, despite years […]
by Nick DeRiso Photo from RobbieRobertson.com “He Don’t Live Here No More,” the edgy lead single from Robbie Robertson‘s upcoming album How To Become Clairvoyant, is a rollicking rebuke of the dark demons that stole too many friends. […]
by Nick DeRiso Over the course of a remarkable career, both with her family band the Staple Singers and as a solo artist, gospel-soul icon Mavis Staples has bravely explored the frustrations, sorrows and then joys of the African-American freedom […]
Photo by Maria Camillo by S. Victor Aaron Sometimes it takes a fantastic cover of a song to make you realize how good the original has always been. This One Track Mind is about one of those times. When I […]
Photo by Autumn De Wilde by Mark Saleski We here at SomethingElse! were sad to see the report of the official breakup of The White Stripes. However, there are many, many websites out there that appear to be […]
