Congratulations, the new album from songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Ungerleider, is the result of the casual playing of his demo tracks in the home of musicians Jenn Wasner and Alan Good Parker. Wasner, a member of Flock of Dimes and Wye Oak, kept asking Parker who was singing those songs on their Los Angeles stereo, and it turned out Parker was playing demos by the Virginia-based pianist he had met when they were touring with Natalie Prass. Ungerleider had recently moved to Los Angeles, and Wasner, who fell in love with these tracks, vowed to help Ungerleider put these songs together for an album.
In addition to co-producing Congratulations with Ungerleider, Wasner also sings and plays a variety of instruments on the record, as do…
Category: folk-rock
Were the Watchtowers is the final recorded work of the Sadies singer-guitarist Dallas Good, completed before his unexpected passing in February 2022. It’s jointly credited to Good and Richard Reed Parry (of Arcade Fire).
…The 9-song album features guest appearances from Margaret Atwood and Neko Case, while other contributors include Kurt Vile, Yo La Tengo, Jim Jarmusch, John Doe, Jon Spencer, Scott McCaughey and Gary Louris. Closing cut “Not in the World” features the aforementioned fan choir, with more than 500 contributors.
…Parry explained that Were the Watchtowers was written and recorded over the course of a decade, and further explores the “cosmic, psychedelic Americana sounds” heard when Parry…
This three-disc package from Edsel combines Labi Siffre’s self-titled debut (1970) and The Singer and the Song (1971) with a disc of additional contemporaneous material. At the time of the set’s release, the still-active British singer/songwriter was in the midst of a commercial upswing with film, television, and ad placements, as well as social media, introducing his underexposed and underappreciated early work to a new generation of listeners. (All of this occurring two decades after Siffre’s songs were sampled for tracks by Jay-Z, Eminem, and Kanye West, among others.) Edsel originally expanded and reissued these two albums separately in 2015, and in 2020 made the discs part of the comprehensive nine-disc box My Song. For the box, two post-1971 B-sides…
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 resulted in a more stripped down version of the band with a quartet of Richard Olson (vocals and guitar), Patrick Ralla (guitar), Paul Milne (bass) and Paulie Cobra (drums) – this being his last recording before a prolonged sabbatical, his live replacement for live tours being Charlie Salvidge who has played previously with the bands TOY, Proper Ornaments, and Great Silkie.
Their sixth proper release in ten years – their…
Tucker Zimmerman‘s final studio album, Dream Me a Dream was completed in 2025 as a collaboration between Zimmerman and Big Potato’s own producer Nick Holton, and was due to be announced when news came of the deaths of Tucker and his wife Marie-Claire at their Liège home. After careful consideration, the label decided to go ahead. “Well, because that’s what Tucker was expecting,” they wrote.
…At 84, Zimmerman was not young, and had decades of sporadically released, underheard music behind him, starting with his Tony Visconti-produced 1968 debut, Ten Songs (which David Bowie listed in Vanity Fair in 2003 as an all-time favourite). Zimmerman’s career never flew but he released some superb singer-songwriter…
…Alex Amen, at 26 years old, appears like a fresh-faced 1970s James Taylor. He is described by his record label ATO as “an artist untethered from time and place”. Growing up on the Gulf Coast of Texas, he moved to California to attend film school, before dropping out to join a commune. He then spent three and a half years on Vashon, an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound, living an outdoorsy, back-to-nature lifestyle that weighs heavily in his music. As he absorbed his environment and honed his musical skills, he released his first batch of solo recordings, The Zorthian Tapes, in 2024. He now lives between Texas, California and New York, and Sun of Amen is his first full-length album.
‘Diamonds’, the first track, is described as…
The polarizing songs of contemporary troubadour Jesse Welles have always been stubbornly present and blunt. His prolific nature has seen the release of many loose singles and celebrated LPs, landing Welles Grammy nods and placing him amongst some of the more talked-about figures in modern folk. At a time when folk music, in a popular sense, was beginning to sound formulaic, Welles’s scorching political takes and dedication to the mysterious songwriters that came before him quickly separated him from a burgeoning scene. Not that Welles’s music is some innovative leap, but it has become the center point of controversy within folk music for some years now, and the artist seems hellbent on getting his point across, uploading acoustic vignettes to…
…In addition to a new remaster of the original album, this edition includes 13 previously unissued bonus tracks including demos, alternate takes, and outtakes from the album sessions.
After The Beau Brummels dissolved in 1968 following their swan song, Bradley’s Barn, it was doubtful that we’d ever hear from the band again, despite their individual and collective brilliance. The group did somehow reunite in 1975, however, for this fine and somewhat understated album. The band’s weaving of folk, country, and pop stylings hadn’t really changed that much from their prime in the mid- to late ’60s.
Ron Elliot has several superb songs on here, notably “Tennessee Walker” and the excellent album closer, “Today by Day,” which is sung by…
Sunflower is the debut album of German/British artist Paul Holland. It features a number of very enjoyable characteristics, from West Coast soft rock to out-and-out folk, via some quite interesting world music. Above all, it has a very relaxed and personal feel to it, making it the perfect sound for relaxing in the sunshine.
It opens with a rocky number, ‘Clouds of Haze’, which jogs along very nicely indeed, with a live feel about it. The track explores the on/off nature of some relationships and certainly encourages the listener to explore the rest of the album, which tends to mellow out as it goes along.
It’s followed by a slower, jazzier track, ‘Feels Right’, which undoubtedly highlights his ability as an astute, talented songwriter.
Originally from Northern California, singer and songwriter Haylie Davis dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles in 2019 to focus on music. Her affection for lyricists like Gram Parsons and Joni Mitchell as well as the soft, warm sounds of ’70s singer/songwriters and the Laurel Canyon movement soon resulted in collaborations with acts like Drugdealer, Sylvie, and Sam Burton under the solo moniker Lady Apple Tree. She eventually left that persona behind and used her own name to record her solo debut album with associates including Burton. The resulting Wandering Star was tracked partly at Los Angeles’ famed Valentine Recording Studios (Bing Crosby, the Beach Boys, Lana Del Rey) and partly at Love Magnet, the Highland Park garage studio of…
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 so as a country crooner. Compiled and issued in 2008, Love Is Overtaking Me most ideally framed this lesser-covered aspect of his work with 21 songs recorded under his own name and as part of The Flying Hearts (with Peter Zummo, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson, a.o.), plus in duo with Steven Hall as Turbo Sporty, The Flying Hearts, and Bright & Early.
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 away from difficult emotions, the depths of vulnerability and sorrow he found on Coyote Butterfly were even more searingly real than anything he’d made before. Even though the album focused on collecting the finite feelings of grief, it represented a place to honor these feelings rather than a capstone in Joyner’s life of work. Tough Love, Joyner’s 19th solo effort and his first since Coyote Butterfly…
Last year, Third Man Records released the reissue of Detroit’s unheralded songwriting genius, Ted Lucas’ 1975 cult classic self-titled album Ted Lucas (OM), as part of an ambitious archival campaign intent on spreading the open secret of Lucas’s genius and putting an end to his unfair anonymity.
Third Man Records released Images of Life, a career-spanning, 3xLP retrospective boxset illuminating the staggering breadth and depth of Lucas’ work, out May 22nd. Disc one, Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965-1970), highlights Lucas’ flirtation with psychedelic major label clout via his bands the Spike Drivers, the Misty Wizards and the Horny Toads. Disc two, Rainy Days (1970-1974) contains the solo acoustic warmth and charm most similar to the music found on his self-titled album.
After finding fame with the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, expatriate Englishman turned West Coast rock icon Graham Nash made an auspicious solo debut on this 1971 disc. It’s an exemplary singer-songwriter effort, striking a vital balance between graceful introspection and political fervor — and while it’s deeply personal, it still carries the harmonies, heart and politics that made CSN(Y) so essential.
With assistance from the likes of David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, and Dave Mason, highlights include the sensitive internal explorations “I Used to Be a King” and “Man in the Mirror” and the impassioned protest anthems “Chicago” and “Military Madness.” If Déjà Vu was a wild canyon party with four competing egos, Songs for Beginners…
Mountain of Youth – the moniker for Hunter Morris’ latest project – mines a slew of classic influences from ‘90s lo-fi rock to folk and Americana on his debut, making for a mix that manages to sound musically nostalgic but with enough of a contemporary feel that it’s not wasting time wallowing in the past.
That doesn’t necessarily pertain to the characters that populate Nowhere, NW, though. “Atomic Days” opens the album with whistling and a steady 4/4 drum beat, before Morris jumps in with lyrics about an aging couple cycling through thoughts of “what if” looking at where they are in life right now. And while the song could just as easily have been a ballad, Morris’ decision to opt for a mid-tempo rock vibe creates a far more…
Cowboy Junkies release Open to Beauty, a transparent yellow 3-LP and 2 CD collection of songs from their 21st century albums to date. This ‘Best Of’ set revisits selected tracks from albums Open, One Soul Now, Early 21st Century Blues, At The End of Paths Taken, Renmin Park, Demons, Sing In My Meadow, The Wilderness, All That Reckoning, Songs of the Recollection, and Such Ferocious Beauty.
Speaking about the new collection, Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins said: “We are now 25 years into this century, the beginning of which saw us leave the world of major labels and return to making music as an independent band. We figured this was as good a time as any to look back, reassess, and reflect on the music…