Charlie Bruber started out slowly, building a name for himself in Minneapolis music circles (and elsewhere) primarily as a multi-instrumentalist and engineer. As is often the case, there is always an extra personal drive there to do your own music, in most cases as a singer-songwriter, whatever the results may be, for better or for worse.
Judging by Prized Burden, Bruber’s second solo outing and luckily for both him and all the listeners that venture into it, better is the direction he is moving in as a solo artist. No, Brugber is definitely not sticking to what is considered the ‘standard’ singer-songwriter formulas, although the album has that slow-building, often languorous feel.
The difference lies in the fact that Bruber has the ability to build his songs…
Category: folk-rock
Having been friends and occasional touring partners for well over a decade, Asheville, NC-based singer-songwriter-guitarist Tyler Ramsey and My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel have at long last made their full-length recorded debut with Celestun. A marvel of interwoven musicianship and testament to the duo’s singular camaraderie, the album encapsulates the two veteran guitarist-songwriters’ mutual admiration and effortless compatibility as they swap and share nine new songs of dazzling dexterity and grace recorded almost entirely recorded on acoustic guitars. Though their initial objective had been all instrumental, the natural flow of the sessions led the duo to begin incorporating vocal tracks. Stark yet intricately arranged songs…
Moon Orchids delivers stately country rock ballads that explode into squalls of guitar noise, shards of trumpets embedded in their Crazy Horse-like roar. This first full-length, following the Kalamazoo, Michigan-based band’s Skin/Skein EP and a single, evokes Neil Young certainly but also the Band and, in quieter moments, Bill Callahan.
That Callahan reference derives in part from bandleader Jacob Simon’s hollowed out tenor, but also from his offhand grace with lyrics. The words are simple and straightforward, but they slant sideways revealing mystery beneath the skin. In “Gospel Tree,” one of this disc’s best cuts (Simon liked it enough to include it twice), the image of castrati monkeys singing falsetto is striking, this tossed off couplet is maybe…
The past is the only thing that lasts … if you move too fast
Yeah, that’s a line from my song “Deco Dance” (Night Lights) that Lou Reed inspired (note the banana reference in the intro and then look at the banana on the cover of the first Andy Warhol produced Velvet Underground & Nico album) and that I wrote over fifty years ago. And I’m humbled to admit that at that young and dumb age (25 although it did seem old at the time) I had no idea how true that would prove (the past being the only thing that lasts part) or how fast I was moving at the time or the totally crazy idea that I’d be releasing tracks that were recorded all those years ago … now. Visions of the Night 1975-2025 is finally available in it’s enhanced, enchanted…
Few artists so consistently bare their souls with such blunt honestly as Ruston Kelly. Repeatedly he seeks some kind of release from calamitous experiences ranging from addiction to failed relationship only to find himself back in the depths of depression once again. Such candour runs through his three solo studio albums with a bellow of defiance in his 2023 release ‘Weakness’. For this album Kelly introduces what may seem a complete change of direction, namely joy. But Pale Through the Window is neither revelation nor a self-help manual. If Kelly has not exorcised his demons, he can live with them. He can find happiness alongside struggle and what really comes through is a sense of gratitude that he is alive and can experience emotions lighter than relentless darkness.
Between Worlds is the first collaboration between two established members of the New York art and music scene. Leslie Graves’ previous release was 2023’s “Hidden In The Days” while Toby Goodshank is known as a long-standing member of The Moldy Peaches, best known for their song ‘Anyone Else But You’.
The ten tracks here were co-written by the pair and have an ethereal quality that might be described as dreamy or psychedelic. Acoustic guitars and vocals that float above them give an other-worldly feel to the record by these Brooklyn-based artist-musicians.
Goodshank has had a lengthy solo career, recording and self-releasing fourteen albums in a five-year spell and touring Europe several times with…
The Worm Moon is the fifth full length LP from New Hampshire’s Footings, home to the songs of underground music lifer Eric Gagne. Out now on Feeding Tube records, The Worm Moon is an immersive set of brief skeletal folk-rock missives and instrumental interludes that rewards repeated through-listens. Thematically The Worm Moon deals with attempts to find peace and growth within spaces of decay and stagnation, reflecting its title which refers to a full moon in March. A time when the worms start moving again, and all the new possibilities of spring are just around the corner – but we are also reminded of all that living tissue which fell the previous Autumn, upon which the worms feast. Like many works of art surfacing at this point in history, this…
Richmond, Virginia-based singer-songwriter Kyle Davis crafts an emotively resonant sound across Jericho, his seventh studio album. A seamless rock and folk cohesion envelops within themes of personal loss and the perseverance needed to overcome.
“As I look back on making Jericho, I realize that creating records is a form of therapy for me,” Davis says. “Not every song is entirely first-person, but the themes of grief, resilience and reflection are universal. I hope these songs help listeners feel a connection to their own journeys.” Davis is also joined by a very talented cast of musicians, re-uniting the team from his 1999 Sony debut, Raising Heroes.
Album opener “The Last Line” melds soul…
The sad truth about memory is that it’s inherently unreliable: when you access it, you’re not remembering the event itself so much as the last time you recalled it. It’s this malleability of history that John Calvin Abney wanted to focus on when it came to his seventh LP, Transparent Towns. “Damn the dust storm / Blowing through my head,” he bemoans the fuzziness of recollection on the title track before equally lamenting all the empty words that go unspoken: “Damn the days / We let go left unsaid.”
‘Last Chance’ finds Abney meditating on the passage of time, and while he’s got enough insight to feel the good times for what they are in the moment (“Struck by suspicion / I’d never feel what I felt then”), that doesn’t mean…
The pitch for the music of The Far West, whose new album is their first since 2014, is “horribly painful songs that you can dance to”, according to bass player Robert Black.
There is less pain, however, than resignation and expectation, but the arrangements often mask this. There are more swayalongs than hootenannies here, but Black is right about danceability on the infectious ‘Meet Me Where We Parted Last’, which uses the horn section well, and the far too short ‘In Your Own Time’ (“things will come, just as surely as the rising sun”).
‘See for Yourself’ opens the album with the sort of music Bob Dylan was making for ‘Blonde On Blonde’; indeed, there’s a lyrical nod to the man on “this rolling stone is now covered in moss”.
Described as the “original unedited version” of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, this RSD exclusive release contains 13 tracks, including four that were removed prior to its original release: “Rocks and Gravel,” “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” “Rambling, Gambling Willie” and “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” Yes, those four tracks eventually found their way out to the public, but it’s still fun to hold a somewhat different version of one of his signature albums that almost snuck out into the multiverse. A few copies of this particular “canceled” edition from the early ’60s have been among the most valuable Dylan collectibles there are.
The release this is most comparable to is an RSD version of “Blood on the Tracks (Test Pressing)” that came out in 2019…
While Jackson Scribner’s sophomore release likely won’t elicit cries of “Judas” directed at him, his move to a fuller, more electric sound warrants attention, just not the kind that involves booing.
Arriving four years after his eponymous debut, Depression Kids, expands the mostly acoustic sound of that album without detracting from his earnest vocals and insightful lyrics. While his songwriting remains honest and authentic, the added instrumentation and arrangements succeed in fleshing out the songs and adding interesting textures to the overall sound. The result is a warm-sounding album featuring an accomplished core of musicians whose symbiotic playing throughout helps fill in the spaces between Scribner’s words and makes for some perfect…
It’s fair to say the past decade has brought some challenges for Swedish singer-songwriter Marlene Oak. Ten years ago, she got the difficult diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Type 2, then just a few years ago she experienced an episode of severe psychosis, something she described as “terrifying”, leading her to question her own reality and even fearing there was a demon inside her.
Understandably, it took her some time to recover, but even whilst still feeling fragile, she felt compelled to turn her trauma into art, and with Peter Morén, she co-wrote and produced what would be Welcome to Oak Land.
“I thought I always knew / What I wanted to do / Now I’m split up in two,” Oak sings on the album opener ‘Threading a Fine Line’, no doubt…
…includes two new, never released songs.
Okkervil River write dreamy songs with slumber-blurred stories and play them with a drifting, somnambulant gait. The band — named for a river outside St. Petersburg, Russia — filled last year’s eye-opening Down the River of Golden Dreams with gentle ballads about beds and war criminals and forgiveness, but the songs on their follow-up EP, Sleep and Wake Up Songs, are more brittle and fragile, like a light sleeper’s snooze. The EP condenses the album’s best qualities and discards most of its weaknesses, and its brevity makes it all the more emotionally forceful.
“Rapt, in Star Wars sheets/ With my hand across your belly/ We waded through the watercolor,” Will Sheff sings on opener “A Favor”. The song…
It’s likely that Elliot Cox didn’t consciously write these songs as celebrations. They aren’t anthems that would fill a stadium with people singing along. Instead, they are heartfelt celebrations of innocence, the exhilaration of change, the courage of youth and the optimism of love, as well as the changing seasons of both nature and the heart.
Cox was born in Gloucestershire, England, raised in Brisbane, Australia, and now splits his time between the latter and London. After receiving his degree in Music Technology, he took his songs on the road, or more accurately, to the streets as he busked across the UK and Europe. The intimacy of singing to small groups of strangers may explain why Cox’s songs are so personal. They seem to come directly from his experiences as he…
Londoner Dave Burn is best known as co-founder of americana “supergroup” Orphan Colours and Ahab, but when solo, his creativity really shines. As the title of his second solo album indicates, he is not completely alone; he has brought a few musician friends along. The rest of the title contains not just his nickname but an altogether more serious notion. Some time ago, Burn found himself working with two other Daves, one bigger and one smaller, but the sense of being in the middle occurred to him in another context. Seeing how just about anything these days is so polarised at two extremes, Burn thought, what about just being somewhere in the middle ground? He posits that wisdom gained with age often takes the edge off previously held views that…
Their first release in over 14 years, Forever, I’ve Been Being Born, finds Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter dealing with life, death, change, and renewal as the Seattle-based outfit’s fragile cosmic folk music drifts into the ether.
The band’s core, vocalist Sykes and guitarist Phil Wandscher, needed time to regroup and find inspiration after losing their rhythm section following 2011’s Marble Son. The new album is softer with layers of strings and light percussion around Sykes’ lyrics of crumbling and rebuilding. The pattern throughout the record is to start soft with minimal support to Sykes’ enchanting vocals, then increase the sound by adding multiple strings, chimes, and fuzzy electric guitar to close.
Their ethereal, floating sound begins with…
Deviate may be the debut album from Oxford-based indie Americana band Steady Habits, but it comes on the back of a burgeoning reputation based on festival appearances, supporting the likes of Danny George Wilson and the odd single release following the band’s 2020 EP Hold in Your Breath. Frontman Sean Duggan hails from New England and the album is shaped by both this physical and emotional journey. It is a journey shaped by Duggan’s memories of home, family and his queer experiences.
The title track is a love letter to his younger self and to those growing up in a world that seems, in Duggan’s eyes, to be eroding freedoms of expression. “The LGBTQ+ community have long been labelled as deviants. This song…