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 rediscovery.
Not coincidentally, there’s also a palpable sense of pride arising from the reimaginings of songs like “I Shook His Hand” off Case’s eponymous solo debut. Recorded over two nights at his home-away-from-home venue in Santa Monica, CA, the performance bristles with energy because Peter’s self-penned songs, much like the traditional “Flying Crow Blues,” have aged so well over time.
And not only does the artist seem to know…
Category: folk-rock
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 the band embark on a wonderful career which produced a series of classic albums. Dave Cousins was the visionary, gifted musician and songwriter at the helm of many line-ups of the band which at various times featured such notable members as Ron Chesterman, Tony Hooper, Rick Wakeman, Richard Hudson, John Ford, Blue Weaver, Dave Lambert, Chas Cronk, Rod Coombes, and John Hawken. Cousins’ musical vision…
Being a singer-songwriter from Los Angeles will always draw comparisons with the early to mid-’70s, when the so-called golden age of California Sound ruled, well, the airwaves then. In the days of streaming the newer generations, one might not be sure what that means, but with his second album Cherry Picker, L.A. singer-songwriter Spencer Hoffman just might give them a very good hint what that sound can offer when it is both thoughtfully and carefully done.
What that would mean is have an individual, but at the same time a diversified sound that doesn’t simply stick to possible set formulas, even if there is inspiration from greats of the sound that are well-known (Jackson Browne) or not so well known (David Ackles).
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, while in recent years you might spot Jerry Joseph or Patterson Hood in the local deli. Vegans and cyclists are welcome in this city, proud of its reputation for being weird. Some twenty years ago, this attracted several musicians from Anchorage, Alaska, who each separately found their way to Oregon before coming together as The Builders and The Butchers in 2005.
With the ramshackle acoustic folk-rock sound…
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 a scary undertaking. It is much easier to fall victim to the downtrodden nature that seems to plague the world around us, and thankfully, Scott Kinnebrew has never been fond of the easy route. The road-tested veteran and member of the beloved country rock outfit Truth and Salvage Co has always brought a complexity to his art that is both welcoming and compelling. On the other hand, his solo work under the moniker Sounding Arrow is getting…
The Gathering, originally released in 2007, returns in an expanded edition that reaffirms the lasting significance of Marianne Segal’s long-awaited comeback. This reissue not only revisits the album but also casts new light on a work that already proved her artistic voice remained as compelling as ever after decades away from the spotlight.
Best known for her work with cult ‘70s outfit Jade, Segal used The Gathering to reconnect with the spirit of that era while subtly updating it for a more contemporary audience. In this expanded form, the album’s depth and craftsmanship become even more apparent, offering listeners a fuller picture of her creative vision.
The record moves effortlessly between traditional folk balladry, roots…
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 blend of melodic psychedelia, wiry guitar epics and sharp, emotionally attuned songwriting. Horrorful Heights offers one of the most approachable entry points to the band’s world in years: a record that gathers their core strengths into a cohesive, vivid set.
Recorded with long-time drummer Dave Pearce and guitarist Paul Simmons, alongside new bassist Louis Wiggett, the album moves…
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 cut his teeth as a jazzman – he’d never really intended to make pop music.
Born in New Orleans, Peltier relocated to Los Angeles as a teen and quickly established himself on the jazz circuit, playing cornet in his band the Jazz Corps and even recording an album with Roland Kirk. But it wasn’t to be; Peltier suffered an injury in 1970 that ended his horn playing career so he retrained as a singer-songwriter…
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 more adventurous palette steeped in ’60s psychedelia and folk-rock from both sides of the Atlantic.
In 2025, he teamed up with Nashville outsiders Rich Ruth and Sean Thompsonto form Shrunken Elvis, a sleek amalgam of ambient post-rock and jazz fusion that further emphasized his range as a musician. On his third and final record of the Coin Collection trilogy, Cullum presents a quieter, more pastoral style that heavily favors…
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 expansive, story-driven songwriting shaped by landscape and history, particularly across albums such as Water and Dust. Here he works with a close-knit group of collaborators. Luke Davison’s drums and Corey McCormick’s bass provide a steady foundation, while electric guitars from CJ Stranger and Jeff Lang add texture and edge. Subtle synthesiser and environmental sound deepen the atmosphere…
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, but the two albums make wonderful companion pieces. Arcade seems to find Wilson at a crossroads: it feels retrospective and nostalgic, but, like Janus, also seems to look forward – although sometimes it feels as if Wilson is stumbling towards the future.
If Arcade finds Wilson in a moment of transition lyrically, this is not the case musically. Wilson has, for a long time, been a brilliant songwriter, singer and master performer. There is now…
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 and Dreams. For decades, the psychedelic soft rock of Music and Dreams served as Folsom’s only public output, and its combination of quality, mystery, and rarity eventually made it a collector’s item. Folsom’s archive of demos, unreleased solo tracks, and tunes made with friends on his reel-to-reel four-track has proved just as interesting as the strange moods of Music and Dreams, and If You…
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, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Out, Mojo, Uncut, and a multitude of others.
Live Forever was captured over the course of two sold-out summer nights at the Old Town School of Folk Music in bandleader Alynda Segarra’s new home of Chicago. Spanning 14 songs, Live Forever presents The Past Is Still Alive in its entirety, as well as a selection of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s show-stopping, set-defining staples: decrying ICE on the poetic “Precious Cargo”…
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 Sykes continues to defy expectations and genre.
The album opens with an instrumental reinterpretation of Spellbinder inspired by Hungarian jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo, whose work has long influenced guitarist David Immerglück. “I’ve been a huge fan of Gabor Szabo my whole life,” Immerglück says. “When the idea came up to record Spellbinder, it felt like a no-brainer.”
…This anniversary release of the band’s first EP includes three additional tracks: remastered demos of “31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues,” previously titled as “Tonight I’m So Down,” and “Lonesome Valley,” recorded at Echo Park Studios in Indiana during the ‘Hard to Love a Man’ sessions, as well as “One Thin Dime,” recorded during the Black Ram sessions at Sound of Music Recording Studios in Richmond, Virginia.
Let’s begin at the end, with the cover of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” that closes Magnolia Electric Co.‘s Hard to Love a Man EP. Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner’s always elegant guitar work makes it clear that the song is probably a barnstormer live, probably saved for the first encore so that the band can cut loose…
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 cover art for fIREHORSE, Easton’s 14th commercially released record. Made with zero artificial intelligence, the album also arrives just as the Chinese calendar enters the Year of the (Fire) Horse — an apt coincidence given that Easton himself, born in 1966, is a Fire Horse.
“Whether the painting influenced the songs or the album was shaped to fit the painting makes no difference anymore,” Easton says.
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, and restraint do the heavy lifting.
The album opens in a relaxed, open-road mode, where dusty guitars and warm organ tones set an unhurried pace. There’s a conversational ease to the vocals, passed around between band members, that reinforces the group’s greatest strength: chemistry. Nothing here feels overworked. Instead, the arrangements breathe, giving each song room to settle into its own pocket.
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 microphone with his wife, Margo Price. The track premiered through Back In The Garage, a stripped-down session project founded by Luke Pelletier and his brother Tristan Pelletier. Originally not intended for public release, the album was recorded at Ivey’s home on a refurbished Tascam 388 reel-to-reel machine, giving the songs a lived-in, analog warmth.
“I recently refurbished an old Tascam 388…
Turner Cody first collaborated with Nicolas Michaux and the Soldiers of Love (Clément Nourry, Ted Clark, and Morgan Vigilante) on his album Friends in High Places. This album marked a turning point for Turner Cody, in which he started to incorporate country influences to his songwriting. But that was only the beginning, and Out For Blood is without question a country album.
This new album offers the perfect canvas for him to express his poetic lyricism, and to paint portraits inspired by American mythologies. The songs explore such themes as freedom, individualism, destiny, sin and redemption. Rooted in traditional narratives yet resonating with our times, these songs are to be seen as parables: imaginary characters faced with the dichotomy…
Slowly coming into view over the past two years through a succession of intriguingly diverse singles that stylistically ranged from doo-wop to ’70s troubadour balladeering, Tyler Ballgame gradually revealed himself, through both his songs and videos, to be a magnetic presence with an octave-vaulting voice.
His backstory proves to be equally compelling and unusual, involving stasis, depression and subsequent epiphany. During the pandemic, close to hitting 30, Tyler Perry was stuck living in his mother’s basement in New England, his early musical promise having led him to Berklee College of Music and then to flunk his course due to marijuana indulgence and poor attendance. After a period of singing in covers bands…