Americana
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 ...
Kieron Tyler
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 what would later be habitually defined as Americana. The word had been around, but Native Sons was pivotal to it gaining traction.Up to this point The Long Ryders were lumped in with Los Angeles’ “Paisley Underground” scene, a loose branding of Eighties bands schooled in and drawing from cool sounds of earlier eras – The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate Read more ...
Liz Thomson
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” or “Lagunitas”, on the other the gentle, delicate beauty of “Mourning Dove Waltz” or “The Heartbreak Store”.From folk to rock and back again, this is a beguiling album that’s tough and tender and full of sly humour. Listening to it, you can see why the audience at last year’s Celtic Connections was won over.No grew up singing in the church choir Read more ...
Gary Naylor
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 plays into a founding psychodrama of the USA - the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Arthur Miller’s play based on those events, The Crucible, is now embedded in the high school curriculum keeping the flame alive, so it makes sense for Talene Monahon to write a prequel from a feminist perspective and, after a run in New York, it has reached the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
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 without a CD player. I still have a deck, and vinyl, and my computer has pretty good speakers. Even so the fact that I’ve not replaced it must say something about my interest, or lack of, in new releases, though exploring on Spotify sometimes throws up something new and exciting. My heart is most readily won by singer-songwriters with a genuine Read more ...
Liz Thomson
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 no beginnings or endings,” Young has stated. “The feeling is captured, not in pieces, but as a whole piece, designed to be listened to that way… This music presentation defies shuffling, digital organisation, separation. Only for listening. That says it all.”Well, that’s the idea at least. Getting up from the sofa to move the tone arm was always a Read more ...
Joe Muggs
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 influential.Along with the likes of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Pixies’s Kim Deal, she not only reconfigured the sense of what the female voice was in rock music, but helped codify singing styles for men and women vocalists in grunge and alt-rock ever after.Later, as the Muses and her solo work evolved, she brought out more historical undercurrents Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
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 the rhythmic foundations of The War On Drugs. In the sixth song, “Jesus is Bored” there’s a hint of WOD’s fondness for a chugging, insistent tempo. It’s more to the fore on eighth track “Feeling Eternal.”In essence though, Jump for Joy adroitly showcases the mélange the North Carolina-based Taylor has perfected. In the studio here with his touring Read more ...