country
Kieron Tyler
Anyone familiar with Calexico and Iron & Wine will be unsurprised by Years to Burn. The 32-minute album (one track of which is a short instrumental) showcases lilting, mid-paced, reflective, country tinged and acoustic-bedded songs fleshed out with piano and Mexican-styled brass. The strongest are those where the up-front vocal blend conjures Simon & Garfunkel (“Midnight Sun”) and CSNY (“The Bitter Suite”). Furthermore, the mostly Spanish-language “The Bitter Suite” is the album’s most striking track. A portmanteau composition, it resonates with the impressionistic approach Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Only those who’ve just popped in from an early 20th century Tennessee cotton field will have recently observed more pairs of dungarees in one place than at Red Rooster. It’s a festival that prides itself on a rich diet of Americana alongside a defiantly retro aesthetic. Red Rooster offers up expertly curated, off-the-beaten-track sounds, but there’s a strong sense that it’s as much about hanging out, about having all day/all evening picnics soaked in bourbon cocktails while somewhere not too far away a banjo is twanged by a stetson-wearing someone you’ve never heard of.The festival runs from Read more ...
Owen Richards
Three albums in, and Vampire Weekend were due a shake-up. Enter Father of the Bride, by far their most ambitious record to date. It’s an 18-track behemoth featuring 14 musicians and six different producers, spanning from folk to jazz. It may be a bit kitchen sink, but it’s also their most exciting release since their eponymous debut.Lead single “Harmony Hall” has already been flooding the airwaves, with a Primal Scream-esque chorus that threatens to follow you to the grave. It’s addictive straight pop that continues on tracks “This Life” and “Bambina”, Ezra Koenig’s vocals finding those Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Torso Hell tells the story of an American soldier whose limbs were blown off in Vietnam. Amazingly, he and his buddies survived, and in the ensuing medical chaos his arms and legs were re-attached to them rather than him. The narrator says “At the hospital, it’s so crazy and confused that when these guys come in, the doctors and nurses don’t know what from what … they just start sewing. The main guy stays a torso, but they put his arms and legs back on the other guys. Two guys each get one of his arms … two guys each get one of his legs.” It’s a typically bizarre Terry Allen set-up. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was the fabled Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard who commented that country music is “three chords and the truth”. Rose-Lynn, the protagonist of Wild Rose, just happens to have the surname Harlan, and she has the “three chords” motto tattooed on her forearm. Singing country music is the only thing that has meaning for Rose-Lynn, a bossy, brassy 24-year-old Glaswegian single mother fixated on her dream of moving to Nashville and making a career in music. Only snag is, she has managed to blank out the whole motherhood aspect of the equation, and if she’s given it any thought at all Read more ...
Owen Richards
Reviewing the soundtrack for a film you’ve not seen is a tricky act. It’s like reviewing a book based on its pictures – you’re missing the context of the music’s purpose. But then, not all soundtracks are created equal, and Wild Rose is one designed to stand on its own two feet. The film stars Jessie Buckley as aspiring country star Rose-Lynn Harlan, recently released from prison and struggling to balance her responsibilities with her dreams. Hell, the only thing that doesn’t tick every country cliché is the Scottish location.The album features a combination of familiar covers and original Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There's a remarkable lightness to the way Norah Jones has glid through her career. She once told theartsdesk that even in her early 20s, faced with the global hyper success of Come Away With Me, “I think I was smart enough to know at the time that it was money in the bank: ‘You can do what you want now, so do it.’” And what she wanted, fantastically, was essentially to be the musician she already was only more so: steadily getting deeper into country melancholy, lounge jazz dreaming and other romantically-lit hinterlands of the American psyche. And now, 17 years on, well Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Every month we start theartsdesk on Vinyl with the Vinyl of the Month, however, the truth is that, depending on your taste, many of the records reviewed below may be your own vinyl of the month. Whether reissues or new material or compilations, theartsdesk on Vinyl attends to all music on plastic. This time we run the gamut from country’n’western to Eighties pop to acid techno to Ozric Tentacles and much else. All sonic life is here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHYves Jarvis The Same But By Different Means (Anti-)Montreal artist singer Jean-Sebastian Audet recorded three albums as Un Blonde but Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Just as our brief, premature spring collapsed into the bluster of Storm Freya, the Enlightenment certainties of Haydn’s more dependable cycle of nature blew into the Royal Festival Hall. Perhaps because its lovely but (for the most part) serene music tends to occupy the sunlit uplands, The Seasons has never quite secured the automatic respect accorded to the cosmic and human drama of its immediate forerunner, The Creation. Sprinkled from first to last with imitative bird calls, hunting horns, babbling brooks, croaking frogs and an entire meteorology of weather-effects, the second great Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Delta Sweete was Bobbie Gentry's second album. Issued in February 1968 six months after her single “Ode to Billie Joe” topped the US charts, it did not make the US Top 100. Nonetheless, it is classic southern-gothic country and a peerless concept album about her roots. Of its 12 tracks, eight were written by Gentry.Mercury Rev’s Pledgemusic-supported homage Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited employs 12 singers – one for each track. Their frontman Jonathan Donahue crops up in brief supporting vocal roles. The core line-up is Donahue, band-mate Grasshopper and former Midlake Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Its Dali-esque sleeve image captures Goes West perfectly. Over its 10 instrumental tracks, the music drifts inwards from outside as if introducing the endless open space of an intensely lit desert. There’s a sadness-tinged reflectiveness too; one which could bring on tears and induce a need to look heavenwards for support.Goes West is the fourth solo album from William Tyler, the guitarist in Lambchop and Silver Jews. He’s set his electric guitar aside for this acoustic-bedded set. A full band accompanies him and Bill Frisell guests on the final cut, “Our Lady of the Desert”. John Fahey Read more ...
Ellie Porter
Ashley McBryde had a very busy year in 2018. After the Arkansas singer-songwriter and "curly-headed bourbon enthusiast" played a tiny stage at Country To Country, she released her debut album to huge acclaim and a Grammy nod; toured with fellow no-nonsense country star Luke Combs; played Jools Holland; sold out her first headline show in London – and made Barack Obama’s "favorite songs of 2018" list. She’s now set to play C2C’s main stage in March, sharing the bill with country giants Lyle Lovett and Chris Stapleton.Full of rich Southern storytelling, radio-friendly choruses and gritty blues Read more ...