When it was time to record her new album — the follow-up to 2021’s excellent American Siren — country-folk singer-songwriter Emily Scott Robinson chose to do so at Dreamland Recording Studios, housed in a 130-year-old church sanctuary hidden in the trees outside of Kingston, New York. But the setting and the spiritual center of her work can be found hundreds of miles to the southwest of that location: “Oh, my heart for Appalachia/ Oh, my heart for these blue hills,” Robinson sings in “Appalachia,” the album’s bluegrass-y title track. “Oh, my heart forever captured, beating still.”
The song is both an ode to that magical, mountainous region in the eastern United States and a celebration of resilience,…
Category: folk
Back in 2021, Tom Paxton and John McCutcheon had stopped touring because of the pandemic, but their ideas for new songs kept flowing. So, the two decided to meet every Monday afternoons at 2pm via Zoom for songwriting sessions. Before long, they had enough songs for an album, and they released Together in 2023. After Together appeared, they continued swapping songs and making music, and when they took stock, they found they had plenty of material for another album, Together Again.
…To dive into their collective pasts would take a book, but suffice it to say that Paxton has recorded or appeared on more than 70 albums starting in 1964, and written thousands of songs which are largely staples of the folk tradition…
Guitars on Life is a duo offering by acoustic guitarists Jack West and Walter Strauss. Both are Californians. The recording was released in tandem with Essential Curvature, a compilation from West’s folk-jazz band who released five excellent albums between 1996 and 2003. He developed a solo style that allows him to play his trademark eight-string acoustic, slide guitars, bass, and percussion — simultaneously, which he does here. Strauss is best known for his global folk work with Malian musicians including kora masters Mamadou Diabate, Sidiki Diabate, and kamale ngoni great Mamadou Sidibe, among others. He’s also worked with multi-instrumentalist Joe Craven, Cuban violinist Tanmy Moreno, Scottish fiddler Jonny Hardie of the Old Blind Dogs,…
Essential Curvature is a double-length compilation drawn from five albums by Bay Area folk-jazz-world fusion outfit Curvature, guitarist Jack West‘s acoustic band that existed between 1996 and 2003. Their discography includes Continuum (1996), Big Comet Headed for Earth (1998), As We Know It (1999), Big Ideas (2001), and Around About Now (2003). Otá Records signed West for Guitars On Life with guitarist Walter Strauss, to be released alongside the new disc. It contains cuts from each of their releases. The sequencing of these 16 cuts is glorious; it is structured along an aesthetic of flow rather than chronology.
The set opener is the killer title track from Big Ideas. It’s performed by West, bassist Scott Amendola, marimbist/percussionist…
…The expanded digital album includes 11 bonus tracks in total: the three songs from the 2007 ‘End Like This’ EP, four previously unreleased outtakes, and four demos.
Makers is Rocky Votolato’s fourth album, appearing fittingly in line after 2003’s Suicide Medicine, but with a worn resilience all its own. It finds Votolato sounding older and weathered, more content than jaded, and there’s a modest quality to his steady voice that projects words as both sincere and comforting.
Some songs are country-tinged — with touches of harmonica, pedal steel, violin, and piano supporting the focal acoustic guitar — but it’s more that they simply evoke images of rural dirt roads, long walks and quiet autumn nights at home…
Johnny Delaware describes his latest record as a nomadic affair.
“I recorded it in studios in Mexico and the United States and in hotel rooms all across Latin America, and if you listen closely, you can hear bits and pieces of all those places and the people I met along the way. They’re all a part of me now.” As a result, Para Llevar is a swirl of indie rock, Americana and psychedelic folk making for a dreamy, atmospheric listen.
The co-founder of the South Carolina-based Susto, Delaware’s solo work is not a big step away from that band’s work, despite being a little more subdued. Para Llevar opens on “Jungle Full Of Ghosts,” a slightly ominous track inspired by the rain in Mexico and a little help from…
…includes the original album and nine bonus tracks: seven previously unreleased tracks plus a 2025 remaster of “City of Refuge” and a 2025 mix of “Memphis Shakedown.”
The problem with flirting with old music styles in the digital speedway of the 21st century is the curse of revivalism, a tendency to reduce contemporary stresses and pressures to a perceived better time in the safe and distant past when things were simpler, clearer, and, well, more pure. But of course it’s always now — it’s never then or when — and musical revivalism can suffer from a kind of strictly enforced and ultimately empty artifice. A facsimile is still a facsimile — it can never, by definition, be the thing itself.
This is the dilemma for the Carolina Chocolate…
Justin Townes Earle, the deeply talented but sadly troubled folk/Americana musician, succumbed to an accidental overdose just over five years ago. Yet within the span of just weeks, an authorized biography — What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome — has been released, and musician Sammy Brue is issuing an album largely drawn from Earle’s journals. Aptly titled The Journals and released with the blessing of Earle’s widow, the record stands as both a work of sadness and a celebration of Earle’s remarkable gift as a songwriter.
The striking opening track, “Lonely Mornings,” sets the tone of the record early on with a stripped-down sound – little more than an acoustic guitar and vocals, putting the lyrics at…
There are few musical outfits whose music creates such a warm glow as instrumental super-trio Leveret. Accordionist Andy Cutting, concertina player (who also recorded this album), Rob Harbron, and violinist Sam Sweeney are at the top of the pile in each of their departments, and their work as Leveret has been consistently excellent through six albums and eleven years.
For Lost Measures, the band unearthed several old tunes and melodies that had lain dormant for many years and combined them with originals from Andy and Rob to result in eleven pieces of beautiful music showcasing the strengths of these musicians, both as individuals and as one of the best instrumental groups operating.
One of the most rewarding aspects of…
The Midnight Ache is John Blek’s follow-up to last year’s rawly honest Cheer Up. It seems the more albums he releases, the musically mellower he gets. His tenth studio album is a lo-fi, laid-back affair adorned with cello (Moritz Brümmer), viola (Filip Sommer) and piano (Brian Casey), evoking the likes of Beck (circa Sea Change), Ron Sexsmith and Elliot Smith. The songs are rooted in themes of home, as reflected in the album cover featuring pressed flowers from his garden, and were mostly self-produced in a studio Blek built with his own hands. While not wholly a dark night of the soul implied in the title (the name he gave those sleepless insomniac hours lying in bed, overwhelmed by everything that was going on), those shadows do hover.
One of the best West Coast folk-rock/psychedelic bands, Love may have also been the first widely acclaimed cult/underground group. During their brief heyday they drew from Byrds-ish folk-rock, Stones-ish hard rock, blues, jazz, flamenco, and even light orchestral pop to create a heady stew of their own.
Love’s The Complete Elektra Albums includes the definitive selection of Arthur Lee and company’s inimitable work. In addition to newly remastered versions of 1966’s Love and Da Capo and the landmark Forever Changes (1967), this box also includes the CD debut of Lee’s original mix for 1969’s Four Sail plus a disc of single sides and rarities that appeared on a series of early ’00s CD reissues of these albums.
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…
Patience and elegance permeate Laura Baird’s work, both as a solo performer and half of The Baird Sisters, with sister Meg. Laura’s last album proper was the wonderful I Wish I Were a Sparrow (2017), and some of the songs of Under Blue have been around since 2012, written during initial recordings for Sparrow. Says Laura on her craft: “Taking your time, letting things go, and letting something bloom before you go into the next thing is something I learned from Meg.”
Both artists have a talent for performing very deliberate music, where each note feels right and nothing is superfluous; this was immediately evident on Sparrow and is here as well. Although Under Blue began life early, it became an album focused on the process of grief,…
1. Pullman – Kabul
2. Melody’s Echo Chamber – The House That…
3. Dry Cleaning – Let Me Grow and You’ll See…
4. Courtney Marie Andrews – Little Picture of …
5. Imarhan – Azaman Amoutay
6. Daniel Knox – Middle Names
7. Juliana Hatfield – My House Is Not My…
8. Wednesday Knudsen – Paillettes
9. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Joy (Live)
10. Langhorne Slim – On Fire
11. Sleaford Mods – The Good Life
12. The Damned – See Emily Play
13. Jana Horn – All In Bet
14. Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Melted…
15. Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – Summertime
Minneapolis-based folk rockers, The Pines, have always been led by the insightful songwriting of David Huckfelt. On I Was Born, But…, we don’t get his songwriting; instead, we get inspired interpretations of mostly lesser-known works by a wide range of North American songwriters. In some respects, the album reads much like Dylan’s Self-Portrait. In fact, both have a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s classic “Early Morning Rain.” That, along with George Jones’s “The Race Is On,’ and Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” are by far the most recognizable in this group of fifteen. And speaking of Dylan, I find similarities to the Duluth bard’s vocals with Huckfelt, which is rather interesting, considering I had never made such an observation through Huckfelt’s work with The Pines…
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…
…Martyn Joseph is perhaps best known for his blend of protest folk, and, although he may have toned down the political ire on this collection of songs, it is still present. The emphasis on this album, though, seems to be resilience, redemption, compassion, and the wrestling with the effects of time.
Despite Joseph having a deeper, richer and more powerful voice, comparisons with early Bob Dylan are perhaps obvious. Here is a man with just an acoustic guitar and harmonica as accompaniment. This arrangement, paradoxically, is both the charm and the limitation of the album. Opening track, ‘Let Me Hear Your Voice’, follows this familiar format. The song deals with isolation, longing and suffering. It is almost a prayer for…
This is Portuguese singer Lina_’s second album in a matter of months. And it is not a bad call. After a slightly disappointing collaboration with Dead Can Dance’s Jules Maxwell, which followed successful previous collaborations with Raül Refree and Justin Adams, her new partnership with Spanish pianist Marco Mezquida is a relief. Not that working with Maxwell was a failure, but it felt like Lina_ had fallen into the trap of a mandatory unexpected move with each new record.
O Fado is a sort of cautious step back. Relying solely on voice and piano, no other electronic or out-of-the-box gimmicks involved, Lina_ finds herself on solid ground again. Mezquida proves to be a consistent partner in crime when the two of them venture into fado atmospheres…
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…
After Banjophony and Banjophonics comes the latest album from Damien O’Kane and Ron Block, Banjovial. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice a pattern beginning to emerge. The release features the duo’s blending of Block’s five-string bluegrass banjo and O’Kane’s Irish tenor banjo.
As the title suggests, the result is, well… jovial. These superb musicians sound like they had enormous fun – something reflected not just in the music but in the often-quirky titles of the tracks.
…There are contributions from their world-class band, including Scotland’s leading bassist and Moog player Duncan Lyall and Ireland’s multi-talented guitarist and percussionist Steven Byrnes as well as some incredible guests including Irish button accordion…