Josh Martin’s Western Mind operates within the mythology of the American West while carefully sidestepping the clichés that usually flatten that landscape into postcard romanticism. The album understands that the West is not merely a geographic region but a psychological condition, shaped equally by physical enormity and emotional projection. Across these eleven instrumentals, Martin transforms highways, abandoned towns, mountain passes, and flickering roadside relics into reflections on solitude, memory, and the uneasy relationship between freedom and isolation. What could have become a simple ambient guitar record instead emerges as a deeply atmospheric meditation on place and perception, rich with emotional nuance and sonic detail.
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Some albums just cry out: “put me on in the car, and turn the volume up!” Jeffrey Halford and the Healers’ latest album, Used Parts, his ninth, is one such release, perfectly suited to a road trip, ideally across Mississippi and Texas, but anywhere with an open road ahead. Opening track ‘Bright Light’ features a cool riff, with Halford’s vocals striking the right note from the off, singing of being a “guitar man”, the troubadour who “Played in Natchez/ I played in Amsterdam/ Roaming around/ From town to town”, while reflecting on the realities of the music business “Looking out at the bright lights/ The buildings tall/ I can’t help thinking/ It’s a long way to fall.”
Singer-songwriter 
A dozen records into his career, Canadian country musician 
Recorded in Nashville with producer Steven Wood and featuring a veritable who’s who of premier Nashville studio musicians, 
What does it look like when the family business is music? In the case of The Family — a kind of “supergroup” made up of singer-songwriter 
Scarborough-based 
Robert Sawrey’s story inevitably shapes the way The End of the Road is heard. Recording under the name 
…’12 Golden Country Greats’, which includes Ween classics “Piss Up a Rope,” “I’m Holding You,” and “Pretty Girl,” has been remastered from the original tapes and comes with more than 20 unreleased demos and outtakes from the Nashville sessions. Among them are two songs cut from the original album, “I’ve Got No Darkside” and Jerry Garcia tribute “So Long, Jerry.”
Ambient Americana Volume 2 brings together major icons of the ambient and experimental folk scenes, including legendary producer Daniel Lanois, ambient guitar pioneer William Tyler, and standard-bearers of the current cosmic Americana revival like Hayden Pedigo and North Americans.
If you’re a fan of Gram Parsons or Emmylou Harris, husband-and-wife duo Eleese and Matthew Meschery’s band name Brand New Heartache is bound to fire a spark of recognition.
On 
Perhaps at the end of time we will feel the full weight of history hitting us from behind like a train. Perhaps as the world limps towards its final moments we’ll experience a flickering, cut-up dream movie made up of random constituent parts of human history.