Americana
Tim Cumming
At 91, Willie Nelson is about to tour the US with The Outlaws, AKA Minnesota youngster Bob Dylan, 83, the even younger Robert Plant, 75, with Alison Krauss, a mere 52, and 72-year old John Mellencamp (plus a trio of 21st century artists in Celisse, Southern Avenue and Britney Spencer). Willie’s setlist contains songs that are older than some of those artistes, but you can bet a silver dollar that one or two from his excellent new album, The Border, will stray out onto the stage with him and his fabled guitar, Trigger.There’s a wonderful and affecting song here about dreaming of being Read more ...
aleks.sierz
It’s often said that contemporary American playwrights are too polite, too afraid of giving offence. But this accusation can’t be levelled at Stephen Adly Guirgis, whose dramas – from Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train in 2002 to The Motherfucker in the Hat in 2011 – are dirty-tongued and often fiercely emotional. Now his Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, Between Riverside and Crazy – which opened Off-Broadway in 2014 and has also won other prestigious awards – comes to the Hampstead Theatre in a production directed by Michael Longhurst, and with a cast headed by the excellent Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Having moved out of her mother’s apartment aged 15 to become “an emancipated minor” and set up her own record label, Righteous Babe, just four years later, every step of Ani DiFranco’s life has been determinedly – some might say ferociously – independent. Alt-folk, alt-rock – the labels don’t matter. What counts is her commitment and steadfastness during the course of a career that’s seen her on the righteous side of so many battles, in the US and beyond. She raised $47,500 to enable New Orleans musicians to replace their lost instruments after Hurricane Katrina. She’s worked with the Guthrie Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Anniversary is Canadian singer-songwriter Abigail Lapell’s sixth album (if we include last year’s lengthy EP of lullabies). Her success has not reached much beyond her native land, as is often the way with Canadian acts, but she’s a proven talent, one who deserves a higher international profile. Anniversary consists of 11 poetic folk-country meditations on love. However, anyone seeking musical representations of euphoria, joy and lust should look elsewhere for, lovely as it often is, the default setting here is a rich melancholia.The album is co-produced by her countryman Tony Dekker, of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Pokey LaFarge has always defied categorisation. He likened his 2020 album Rock Bottom Rhapsody to a mix tape, with elements of bluegrass, barrelhouse, doo-wop, jazz, rockabilly, country blues, the great American songbook and even hints of movie music. In the Blossom of Their Shade, his lockdown album, was an exhilarating ride in the ghostly company of the likes of Hank Williams, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers.In the three years since Blossom was released, LaFarge has decamped to Maine where he worked long days on a farm. “I’d be pushing a plow [sic] or Read more ...
aleks.sierz
I’ve never been one for school reunions, but even if I had kept in touch with former classmates I think that American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s The Comeuppance might, just might, lead me to reflect on the wisdom of revisiting the adolescent past.Originally staged Off-Broadway last summer, the play has been brought to Islington’s Almeida Theatre by its original director, Eric Ting, with a new and excellent British cast. As well as being a reunion play, it’s also a memory play with ghostly elements. Question is, does this mix work on stage?Set in Autumn 2022, the drama focuses on a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHLondon Afrobeat Collective Esengo (Canopy)The weather has not been kind to the UK lately, pelting it daily with endless drizzle and gloom. So wrap your ears around this, a mini-album that will infuse any room with blazing sunshine as soon as the needle hits the plastic. Esengo was supposed to be reviewed last month but one listen and, instead of being held back for review, as it should have been, it bullet-shot straight into the record box for DJing (where it more than proved its worth). The band are a loose-limbed outfit, nine-strong and consisting of members from England, Read more ...
Tom Carr
For the past almost two years, Maggie Rogers has taken an unexpectedly special place in my heart and musical tastes. Upon reviewing her previous album, Surrender, because of the difference in style and sound to my usual tastes I was caught completely off guard.Combined with just as unforeseen changes in my personal life, Surrender was an unfounded delight that chimed completely at that point in time. Now it’s not just an album, but a time capsule of those summer months of 2022.Fast forward, and Rogers has provided another tapestry of sounds steeped in texture and personal depth with third Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Perfecting Ernest Hemingway’s advice that “a writer should create living people; people not characters”, In Lieu of Flowers sees Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties’ Dan Campbell invite fans back into the fictional universe of open-wound Aaron in a way that is so intimate and descriptive, you can’t help but hurt for him.The Emo-Americana band, now made up of 16 musicians, introduced Aaron West’s tragic story a decade ago. We Don’t Have Each Other was followed by a three-track EP and a single; and then a second album, 2019’s Routine Maintenance. The fervent interest in the next chapter of this Read more ...
Katie Colombus
There are few ways of describing the music of The Dead South – progressive bluegrass is my favourite because it's so meaningless to so many. By which I mean it doesn't matter what the genre, it's just good music, and that's all you need to know.I have such beautiful memories of "In Hell I'll Be Good Company" coming to our attention via Youtube during Lockdown (not sure why as it was released in 2014) – an incredibly catchy track that told the strange tale of an abusive husband killed by his wife. It became a family anthem for 2023 that we all (age range 4-44) perfected our bounce'n' heel Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Having carried herself to the front rank of young British singer-songwriters with her debut album, 2021’s The Eternal Rocks Beneath, Birmingham-born Katherine Priddy carries her muse from the eternal and mythological poetry of that album for a more centered, experiential sense of time as captured in the back and forth rhythms of The Pendulum Swing.Sealed at the opening and end by two short, limpid instrumental pieces (“Returning” and “Leaving”), the songs within range from evocations of family – the likes of “Walnut Shell”, about her twin brother, and the self-explanatory “Father of Two” Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Critically acclaimed in the US, singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz has won four Grammies during the course of her career. Born in Texas, spending most of her adult life in New York, her seventh album was created in her new hometown of Nashville, with an all-star cast of country-flavoured session musicians and producer Daniel Tashian.She moved to Nashville to be with her future husband, and some of the songs reflect this, but musically Jarosz holds the line with what came before, highly polished, reflective folk-Americana.It’s a matter of taste as to whether listeners find her style of production Read more ...