Americana
Music Reissues Weekly: The Long Ryders - Native SonsSunday, 21 January 2024![]() Native Sons joyfully reframed musical styles of the past for the present. Even so, the freshness and oomph of The Long Ryders’ debut album meant revivalism was sidestepped. Originally issued in October 1984, it was a landmark in helping to nurture... Read more... |
Album: Lizzie No - HalfsiesFriday, 19 January 2024![]() With this her third album, Bronx-born-singer-songwriter Lizzie No promises “an apocalyptic journey from exile to liberation” – a bold promise. Halfsies is certainly an album of musical contrasts: on the one hand the freneticism of “Getaway Car... Read more... |
The Good John Proctor, Jermyn Street Theatre review - Salem-set drama loses some of its power in LondonSaturday, 13 January 2024![]() It is no surprise that the phrase “Witch Hunt” is Donald Trump’s favoured term to describe his legal travails. Leaving aside its connotations of a malevolent state going after an innocent victim whilst in the throes of a self-serving moral panic, it... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2023: Rhiannon Giddens - You’re the OneFriday, 22 December 2023![]() My CD player died some time ago, that is to say it sticks or skips whatever I do to clean it. Dismantling the fancy stack in which it sits and installing a replacement is a hassle, but even so it would once have been unthinkable that I could survive... Read more... |
Album: Neil Young - Before and AfterMonday, 04 December 2023![]() Down memory lane, taking us back some six decades to the Buffalo Springfield, the latest Neil Young album's almost 50 minutes of continuous music, each song segueing into the next.“Songs from my life, recently recorded, create a music montage with... Read more... |
Album: Kristin Hersh - Clear Pond RoadWednesday, 06 September 2023![]() Kristin Hersh’s voice, it transpires, is ageless. In the 80s when Throwing Muses broke through, she hit a particular combination of tones – blurring boundaries between harsh and smooth, melodic and discordant, trad and weird – that became vastly... Read more... |
Album: Hiss Golden Messenger - Jump for JoyWednesday, 23 August 2023![]() Any surprises which Jump for Joy brings aren’t about the nature of the music or the unfailingly open lyrics recounting Hiss Golden Messenger main-man M.C. Taylor’s outlook on his life, but an intermittent undertone suggesting he’s been considering... Read more... |
Album: Rhiannon Giddens - You're the OneSaturday, 12 August 2023![]() In late 2019, BC, another age, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi stepped on to a Southbank Centre stage and gave one of those mesmerising performances that forever stays in the memory.In the three years or so since, Giddens has been given a... Read more... |
Album: William The Conqueror - Excuse Me While I VanishThursday, 03 August 2023![]() Ruarri Joseph is not a household name but in a Sliding Doors scenario, he might have been. Scottish, raised in New Zealand, and based in Cornwall, he signed to Atlantic in 2007, and had the same management as Damien Rice and David Gray. His output... Read more... |
Lorrie Moore: I am Homeless If This is Not My Home review - between this world and the nextThursday, 27 July 2023![]() Lorrie Moore’s brief but haunting I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a bizarre, unsettling read. At times it’s a road trip, at others a romance, then supernatural horror, Greek tragedy, or an epistolary short story nestled within the larger... Read more... |
Album: Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway - City of GoldFriday, 21 July 2023![]() Some country music cosies up as close as possible to pop, in hopes of dragging more listeners in, smoothing away the raw backwoods feel. The most famed exemplar of this route is, of course, Taylor Swift, at least in her early career. Other country... Read more... |
Album: Lucinda Williams - Stories from a Rock ‘n’ Roll HeartMonday, 26 June 2023![]() 2020 was a cruel year for everybody but in addition to the horrors of Covid which included the loss of her compadre John Prine to the virus, Lucinda Williams endured damage to her Nashville home in a tornado and then, in November 2020, she suffered... Read more... |
