Authenticity, thoughtfulness, and depth inform Minneapolis-based guitarist Zacc Harris‘s sequel to his acclaimed 2017 release American Reverie. While only one of the eight pieces is a Harris original, his fresh interpretations make the covers feel like personal expressions. Stephen Foster might be the composer responsible for “Hard Times,” for instance, yet when performed by the guitarist, bassist Matt Peterson, and drummer Lars-Erik Larson it seems more like a Harris piece than a treatment of another’s material. That many of the songs resonate so powerfully in our current climate factors into the personalized impression they make too. Bob Dylan wrote “I Shall Be Released” and “Masters of War” long ago, but each sounds no less timely when broached through…
Category: folk
Ed Askew was a New York artist, poet, songwriter and genuine underground legend. Having first broken through with his self-titled album in 1968 (subsequently known as Ask the Unicorn), he made ripples in the Woodstock generation, and ploughed a furrow similar to the likes of The Incredible String Band or Vashti Bunyan on this side of the Atlantic. However, this did not translate into commercial success, and he soon settled into a life of painting, writing, and teaching art. He never stopped making music, although this was generally of the home recording variety, without any particular label interest.
In 2002, a re-release of his lost second album, Little Eyes, gradually started to garner some attention, and eventually led to 2013’s…
Perhaps you’re familiar with Star Moles, the ultra-prolific recording project from Philadelphia musician Emily Moales. Perhaps you’re also familiar with Rubber Band Gun, the similarly ultra-prolific project from regular Star Moles contributor Kevin Basko; Rubber Band Gun and Star Moles dropped the song “Frodoboy” a couple of months ago. Perhaps you would also like to know about Sam and Louise Sullivan, a sibling duo who make a ton of music with Moales and Basko and who have a new album Love & Devotion.
Sam and Louise Sullivan grew up around the US, and they started playing folk music together as kids. These days, they both live in Philadelphia, where Louise runs her own ceramics business and Sam works as a teacher.
Down in rural Tennessee, place names often arose from the activities that occurred there: Whetstone Mountain, Poorhouse Branch, Tater Hill, Washboard Creek. If this folk etymology holds, it makes you wonder what was going on in Sweet Lips, Finger, and Hookers Bend. Each of these locations lends its name to a song on Sir Richard Bishop’s newest album, Hillbilly Erotica — the title of which suggests that he knows exactly what those folk were getting up to.
On Hillbilly Erotica, Bishop returns to his roots in more than one way. His paternal homestead of Enville, Tennessee, can be found among these backwoods haunts, and the album is steeped in the folk music of the region. It is a sequel of sorts to last year’s Hillbilly Ragas, which…
It is more than twenty years since Mick Flannery released his debut album Evening Train, but the tale it told of (as he puts it) “love, lust, gambling, and a faithful betrayal” has obviously preyed on his mind as he has carved out a feted musical career. Now he has reworked the songs from that record and added ten new ones into an album which accompanies a stage production. The House Must Win has already played to 17,000 people in Ireland over a five-week run. This could be termed the soundtrack album, and Flannery has clearly poured his heart and soul into it.
He has gathered a stellar cast of musicians and guest artists for the recording, including Anais Mitchell, Jenn Grand, Lisa Hannigan and others on vocals, as well as sundry Flannerys.
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.
“Our May 2021 issue came with a special free CD – the then-latest instalment in our Sounds of the New West series. Titled Ambient Americana: A Road Trip Across Psychic State Lines, it brought together a group of artists who were mixing the traditions of country and folk with the mind-expanding sounds of ambient and kosmische music.
…a mere five years on, we’re delighted to bring you Volume 2, which comes free with Uncut’s August 2026 issue.”
The Lovin’ Spoonful were one of the most popular American bands of the 1960s; they were also one of the most confounding. They were a thoroughly modern band capable of transcendent pop moments like “Do You Believe in Magic,” beautiful ballads like “Didn’t Want to Have to Do it,” hot rockers like “Summer in the City,” and songs like “Rain on the Roof” that niftily anticipated country-rock, but they also padded out their albums with old-timey jug band and blues songs that made them seem like fogeys before their time. This split made them a brilliant singles band, while their albums were more hit and miss.
The whole unruly mess is available for view in one sprawling package on Strawberry Records’ complete retrospective What a Day for…
On Christian Name, an album inspired by the devastating loss of a child, Charles Wesley Godwin narrates his journey through despondency, grief, and redemption to a new understanding of his faith.
Godwin explains, “These songs really meant a lot to me. There’s parts of me and parts of the things that I’ve gone through in the last couple years that are in each and every song on this album.”
The title of the album – Christian Name – and the cover art were inspired by his late grandfather, Charles Godwin, who was a preacher in the Methodist Church. Alongside two standout collaborations, the catchy “Better That Way” with Luke Combs and the moving “Hey There Son” with Wyatt Flores, Christian Name finds …
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.
These are the sort of thoughts that must have preoccupied Creekbed Carter Hogan during the making of Peasants Revolt, a record that acknowledges the possibility of an imminent apocalypse but is steeped in a wide range of musical and social histories: medieval uprisings, the Haitian Revolution, twenty-first-century trans activism, Americana, political folk music.
To say Peasants Revolt provides a rich and varied listening experience is…
It doesn’t seem that long ago that singer-songwriter Maya de Vitry’s former group, The Stray Birds, was charming audiences.
Yet that ended in 2018, and de Vitry has been prolific since, issuing her fifth solo album, All My Faith. The album is self-produced and comes on her own independent label, Mad Maker Studio. She originally hails from Lancaster, PA, but has resided in Nashville for nearly a decade. Her crystalline voice is the essence of beauty, while her songwriting continues to grow in personal expression and imagery.
The album embraces folk music, folk-rock, and alt-country influences. Simply put, she’s leaning more toward country here than on her previous releases. The project, recorded in three…
If by looking at the cover for Max Subar’s album, Anything Could Be, you get the impression that you are looking at (and possibly will listen to) a typical singer-songwriter album, you would be both right and wrong.
Right, because yes, this is a singer-songwriter album, and its often sparse, acoustically driven sound is all over the place. Wrong, because there is that often missing element of distinction in such music, and here it goes beyond some inventive arrangement touches that embellish the music. It is in one of the key elements that make singer-songwriter music work – the lyrical content that goes beyond ‘pain in my heart’ style storytelling that graces (or disgraces) so many singer-songwriter albums.
Five decades into a career that has seen Ed Snodderly as a songwriter, performer, actor, and owner of the legendary Down Home club in East Tennessee, comes perhaps his most personal release to date. ES Pearl Presents Baggage Flies Free not only continues the family name; his grandma was Pearlie Bell, his mom Willie Pearl, but offers a glimpse into his life in East Tennessee. Surrounded by a stellar cast that includes Tim O’Brien, Amythyst Kiah, Verlon Thompson and Brother Boy Eugene Wolf, the mainly acoustic songs still have a contemporary feel thanks to some pin-sharp production.
The opener, ‘Coming Down This Road’, picks up pace as it travels, leading into the melodic ‘Willow Green’, which sees Snodderly admiring…
This is George Mann and Si Kahn’s second album working together following the release of Labor Day: A Tribute to Hardworking People Everywhere in 2024. That album, released to celebrate Kahn’s 80th birthday, was rightly celebrated within the Civil Rights and the music fraternities.
…This latest album, Mayday!, is subtitled Songs to Keep Our Hearts Steady and Strong for the Fight and reflects on life in a darker, less democratic country. The album features 9 Kahn originals, two of which were recorded last century, 3 new songs jointly written by Mann and Kahn, and a track where Kahn shares a writing credit with Beethoven. Mann has clearly been a key facilitator in making this album to celebrate Kahn and takes the lion’s share of the vocals, with Kahn taking…
Sophie Wellington was born and raised in Virginia but moved to Boston to attend the renowned Berklee College of Music. On Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, Wellington is the only performer laying down guitar, fiddle, vocals and percussive dance. Their style involves blending a lot of influences as well as applying the methods from one instrument to another to create what they describe as a quilt of American folk music.
The record is their second full-length release. One of the most striking things about the album is a sense of space where, despite quite a lot going on, the music and the vocals leave a lot of room for the listener to reach in and appreciate the different dimensions of each piece. A spell of stillness in a busy world. That said, the percussive…
Dark Wings is Mason Jennings’ 18th studio album. Across 11 songs, the Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter grapples with trauma, faith, survival, and hope, while embracing a looser, more collaborative approach than many of his most recent recordings. The album was developed through a series of sessions with drummer Scott McPherson, best known for his work with Elliott Smith, Beck, and She & Him.
At age 51, Jennings finds himself moving between raw honesty about childhood scars and dark thoughts, spiritual questioning that refuses easy answers, and a stubborn belief in love’s power to endure. Tracks like “If,” “Sacred Heart,” and “Eagle” capture an artist who has walked through the valley of death and come out…
Seattle indie-folk icons The Head and the Heart commemorate the 15th anniversary of their landmark debut album with the release of a 2011 live show at their beloved hometown venue Neumos. This CD captures a vibrant live set right at the moment the band was breaking out. Live at Neumos (2011) features all the songs from The Head and the Heart’s platinum-selling self-titled album, plus two previously unreleased songs: the original “Long Time Away,” and a cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “T is for Texas (Blue Yodel #1).”
The Head and the Heart are an acclaimed indie folk band whose influences include Americana, country-rock, and classic Beatlesque pop. The band was formed in Seattle by a group of Northwestern transplants and broke…
Folk music in the United States underwent a rebirth of sorts in the 1960s when young people began using the direct messaging and emotionally bold sound of the genre as a component of protest, making songs that expressed their political views and reflected the sweeping social change their generation was experiencing. With 100 songs and well over four hours of music, When Will They Ever Learn? A Story of U.S. Folk Music 1963-1969 explores every phase of the folk revolution of the ’60s, tracking the evolution as it quickly grew away from traditional trappings into forms that were more experimental but no less righteous. The earliest waves of collegiate folk-rock are represented by the spartan production and vocal harmony-centric songs of groups like…
Matt Jones and The Bobs formed way back in 2011 while they were studying at Radford University, all sharing a love of americana, roots, and classic rock. Their debut album Brother’s Hymn was released in 2014 to much local acclaim. It highlighted all the issues about growing up in small-town Southwest Virginia from the view of young men of a certain age. However, despite paying their dues, as with many college bands, they broke up in 2015 to concentrate on other pursuits.
However, unlike many bands, they kept in contact with each other and eventually got back together in 2024, stepping back into the world of music older and wiser, perhaps, each with ten years more experience to draw on. The result is a splendid, mature album for today’s musical…
…featuring newly unearthed bonus tracks and unheard demos.
The overused shorthand, “retro,” can mean that a group short on their own ideas has repackaged the past. Although Israel Nash Gripka’s country-rock/Americana infused music raises immediate comparisons to a host of classic folk-rock acts, Israel Nash’s Rain Plans is hardly a slavish (or lazy) re-creation of history. Instead, he’s applied a master craftsman’s aesthetic to expanding what might have started as simple singer-songwriter tunes. The resulting album features richly layered instrumentation that draws on acoustic and electric sounds, soft-diffusion reverb to cosset the mix and, above all, a worshipful appreciation for warm analog tone. Casual listeners may…
1925 was a landmark year for US recording studios, marking the introduction of electronic microphones to replace the huge gramophone horns previously used to harvest the sound of singers and musicians. This brought about a dramatic leap in sound quality and established 1925 as an effective year zero for modern compilations.
The 32 tracks selected here by the author and musicologist Dick Spottswood draw on 1925 releases from Paramount, Columbia and Vocalion – then the industry’s three giants – but also from smaller and more adventurous labels, such as OKEH and Gennet.
Spottswood’s choices provide us with a rich and thoroughly enjoyable mixed bag of light-hearted trad jazz (including one of…