If every picture tells a story, then perhaps the album cover for The Hanging Stars‘ latest release, Just a Day, is perhaps something of a statement of intent because it features a simple photo of the four current band members standing against a dusty cornflower blue backdrop. A line-up change at the end of 2024 […]
Peter Case at McCabes: My Life to Live is not the usual career retrospective of a veteran artist. Granted, the former leader of the Plimsouls spans his canon here, but in doing so over the course of the seventy-one-plus duration of this twenty-two cut sequence, he plays, sings, and speaks with a tangible sense of […]
Staying positive is an incredibly difficult skill to maintain. With all the negativity and palpable tension thickening the air, stirring up a fog so dense we sometimes forget to look at our fellow humans and share a smile, being the one to break the mold and share a technology-free moment with someone, or anything, is […]
Simon Joyner’s 2024 album Coyote Butterfly ranks among the most simultaneously beautiful and devastating documents of its kind, a painfully raw and autobiographical account of the untimely death of Joyner’s son Owen. Since the early ‘90s, Joyner has been one of independent music’s most authentically independent artists, and while his poetic songs have never shied […]
Country boy-in-the-Big Apple, Arthur Russell does folk fusion with his own, peerless verve on a remastered edition of his evergreen 2008 retrospective. One of the most fascinating, multifaceted, greatest artists of the late C.20th, Arthur Russell is variously known as a disco auteur, virtuoso avant-pop cellist-composer, and bard of the highest order, but maybe less […]
Back to the Garden (A Tribute to Joni Mitchell), the excellent free CD accompanying the June 2026 issue of MOJO Magazine, is less a conventional tribute album and more a lovingly curated journey through the many worlds of Joni Mitchell. Bringing together artists from folk, jazz, soul, indie rock and Americana, the collection celebrates not […]
Deluxe double LP reissue of The Head And The Heart’s debut album. Featuring the original album remastered on the first LP, plus seven bonus tracks on the second LP. The bonus tracks are a combination of previously unreleased demos and live tracks, plus one live track available for the first time physically, and one previously […]
The Pacific north-west of the USA has been called home by many giants of the blues, rock, and grunge scenes, but alongside these, there’s long been a fertile seam of indie folk and alt-country music. Fleet Foxes and Brandi Carlile hail from Seattle, and from Portland, there’s The Delines, The Decemberists and The Dandy Warhols, […]
Official 5CD box set featuring all of the surviving British radio and television appearances by the legendary Strawbs between 1966 and 1984. The roots of Strawbs go back to 1963 when Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper founded the bluegrass duo The Strawberry Hill Boys. The first Strawbs’ album was issued in May 1969 and saw […]
Danny George Wilson follows up the Danny & The Champions of the World album, You Are Not a Stranger Here, with a collection of introspective, powerful songs. The cosmic landscapes of You Are Not a Stranger Here give way to something more plaintive, rawer and earthier. It may or may not have been Wilson’s intention, […]
Digging even deeper into a personal archive of home-recorded tapes from another time, If You Wanna Laugh, You Gotta Cry Sometimes is the third volume of previously unreleased songs from the already obscure Georgia singer/songwriter Robert Lester Folsom. In the mid-’70s, when Folsom was just out of his teens, he self-released the studio album Music […]
Horrorful Heights marks a formidable new chapter in The Bevis Frond’s deep and storied catalogue, showcasing the enduring creativity of songwriter, guitarist and frontman Nick Saloman as he moves into yet another decade of recording. Long established as one of the most distinctive voices in British underground rock, Saloman continues to refine the band’s signature […]
Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke from unheard tapes recorded in the ’70s, Echo Park is a snapshot of Los Angeles life from helium-voiced mainstay Tommy Peltier that foreshadows the blue-eyed soul that would emerge just a few years later. Now 90 years old, Peltier is still playing relatively regularly for a nonagenarian, but he […]
William Crighton’s Colonial Drift plays as a slow journey across landscape, memory and time. The album moves in three clear movements, threaded together by fragments of radio chatter, environmental sound and drifting noise, creating the sense of travelling through a country where past and present sit side by side. Crighton has built a reputation for […]
Since debuting as a bandleader in 2020, Nashville studio ace Spencer Cullum has continued to steer his music further and further from the country world where he makes his living. A seasoned pedal steel player will always have a job in Music City, but the first two albums in his Coin Collection trilogy revealed a […]
Consummate troubadour and songwriter Tim Easton wrote much of his new album beneath a painting of a red horse. The artwork — created by his sister, visual artist Susan Easton Burns—was executed in an abstract-realist style, using gardening tools instead of paintbrushes to form a vivid image from fragmented strokes. It now serves as the […]
Hurray for the Riff Raff release Live Forever, a new live record on the exact two-year anniversary of The Past Is Still Alive – named one of the Best Albums of the 2020s So Far by Pitchfork, and one of the Best Albums of 2024 by the New York Times, Atlantic, Associated Press, NPR Music, […]
A companion piece to the album, Right Now!, this collection contains additional recordings from those sessions, as well as Tchad Blake remixes and reworkings of songs from Right Now! All recordings, except for “Reap What You Sow,” have never been released. The psychedelic supergroup featuring Dave Alvin, Victor Krummenacher, David Immerglück, Michael Jerome, and Jesse […]
With Country Sides, The Band of Heathens lean fully into their rootsy instincts, delivering an album that feels both lived-in and refreshingly unforced. The record sits comfortably at the crossroads of country, Americana, and soul-tinged rock, favoring groove and feel over flash. It’s the sound of a seasoned band trusting the songs, letting space, harmony, […]
Bob Lind has a mighty back catalogue. He recorded his first album nearly 60 years ago; he’s been recording almost consistently ever since, and his songs have been covered by over 200 artists, including Glen Campbell, Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton, Eric Clapton, Nancy Sinatra and The Four Tops. In recent years, he’s found a musician […]
Singer-songwriter Jeremy Ivey has released his new album, Its Shape Will Reveal Itself, via Soggy Anvil Records. The record is an intimate, home-recorded collection that leans into warmth, imperfection, and raw emotion rather than polished studio sheen. Alongside the album’s release, Ivey has shared its first single, “Edge of Darkness,” recorded live to a single […]