Since forming at Flyte in 2013, childhood friends Will Taylor and Nick Hill have continued to evolve — briefly expanding to a quartet before returning to their original partnership two years ago. The duo is known for a familiar, early-era-Beatles-inspired ethos: vulnerable songwriting in tight, bare arrangements that remain imaginative, especially appealing to stereo listeners. Although these compositions make the duo seem self-contained, they openly welcome collaboration. In 2023, Flyte featured collaborations with indie producer Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Hovvdy), English folk artist Laura Marling on “Tough Love,” and actress Florence Pugh and Grammy winner Madison Cunningham on live versions of the songs.
On Between You and Me, their fourth album,…
Category: indie-folk
Anna Tivel has always maintained a singular presence in the burgeoning modern folk scene, but that has not stopped the singer-songwriter from landing in the blinding light of critics’ and fans’ attention. Since her 2014 debut, and especially since her output has reached a prolific level since 2019, Tivel has been thrust into the center of this folk movement, being heralded as one of the more innovative voices in the parade of new folk musicians seeking to capitalize on twangy trends. Folk traditions and honoring Americana legends, though, are not fads for Tivel; her artistry simply won’t let her fall victim to the sugar-coated tropes that plague the genre today. Tivel forces experimentation, yet makes it feel natural, and she is expanding on this sentiment…
Eve Adams has a soft, carrying voice, one that commands the swirl and sweep of her songs effortlessly, at a murmur. There’s a cool, unharried elegance to her delivery, a remove. Nothing surprises her in these elliptical, occasionally lurid sketches — whether of late-night carousing, a fatal love affairs or climate apocalypse. The comparisons to Julee Cruise only go so far. They fail to account for the endearing catch, the bluesy growl in the way she’ll accent a vocal line, but you can see where they come from.
This is Adams’ second full-length, following 2021’s Metal Bird, a more conventional work of dusky Americana. Here, though surrounded by the sounds and textures of twang, she establishes an urbane, unruffled presence.
Anand Wilder released his solo debut album I Don’t Know My Words in 2022, and last year he teamed with Dirty Projectors’ Maia Friedman to cover Metric in honor Last Gang Records’ 20th anniversary. Now the former Yeasayer member is back with news of a sophomore solo LP.
For Psychic Lessons, Wilder teamed with co-producer Jachary, known for his work with L’Rain and Tasha. The pair also brought on board Yeasayer collaborator Walter Fancourt to create what Wilder calls a “DIY Compass Point Studios,” referring to the famed recording locale in the Bahamas. Wilder on the genre-melding project: “I just want to keep making records in a reeling music industry. This one’s about drawing inspiration anywhere I find it – myth, history…
A prolific recording artist since 2002, James Yorkston has once again found a new way of presenting his poetic songs.
This is to add to his already lengthy list of collaborations that have taken in everyone from the Athletes and the Fence Collective to the Big Eyes Family Players, Kathryn Williams, Jon Thorne, and Suhail Yusuf Khan. The self-styled “low-rung sangster from the East Neuk o’ Fife, Scotland” has also, you could say, found a new opportunity to escape the “folk” tag that’s continued to dog him ever since he once (or twice) recorded an album of traditional songs, worked with the Watersons, and – as an acoustic-guitar player of some renown – supported Bert Jansch on tour.
Yorkston is working once more with soft-voiced…
…Case Oats’ debut record, Last Missouri Exit, does not reinvent the wheel. But it isn’t trying to, nor does it need to. Frontwoman Casey Gomez Walker’s voice undoubtedly calls on the earnest plaintiveness of Mo Tucker, her songwriting brings to mind David Berman’s interpolation of lived-in specifics and heart-rendingly blunt self-analysis, and the instrumentation takes after Wilco (unsurprising, considering Spencer Tweedy is Gomez Walker’s fiancé and the band’s drummer). The record is squarely set in alt-country territory, yet it still feels fresher than a host of recent albums straining to claim some “lush” sound as invention. Case Oats aren’t forcing originality or fleeing lineage — they’re simply writing what they know, and in doing so, carve out something novel.
Calendar Year, the new album from Chicago-based psychedelic folk songwriter and musician Jessica Risker, evokes a timeless, dreamy vibe that sounds like it could have come from this year or maybe even 1972.
The songs are impeccable, but the arrangements have an indefinable quality that is both comforting and mysterious. Coming off a seven-year hiatus from her debut album (I See You Among the Stars, which followed her stint from 2011 to 2018 when she made albums under the moniker Deadbeat), Risker released the new album from songs she wrote in 2020. However, she hesitates to call it a “pandemic record”.
“I think of it more as a snapshot of a year in a life,” explains Risker, “With themes of human,…
The alt-folk band that got its start in Traverse City juggles so many musical balls that keeping track of the musicians’ globe-trotting, collaborative and creative ventures is akin to watching a three-ring musical circus.
Multi-instrumentalist and founding band member Sav Madigan tours full-time as a “utility player” and backing singer with country superstar Lainey Wilson, co-founder and multi-instrumentalist Katie Larson is part of emerging country-pop act Brett Young’s band, and drummer/percussionist Katelynn Corll just returned from a European tour with blues-rocker Joanne Shaw Taylor. Together as The Accidentals, the band just wrapped up Time Out 3, a new collaborative studio album with other notable singer-songwriters.
New England-based Dan Cloutier travelled to Greenland, not to claim the land for the United States but to record his latest album. He took in Newfoundland, too, revelling in the beauty of the frozen north. The result is a record that is shaped by its surroundings. Cloutier has soaked up the air, the cold, and the local music, with its Celtic roots. Excellently played throughout, there are songs of hope to push away the darkness.
Cloutier has a long-time love affair with the tundra and the ice beyond. His previous set, “The Battle of Greenland”, was far more reflective than this joyous latest offering. It is eight years since the sombre, but beautiful collection was released, and after soaking up more of the atmospheric world, Cloutier felt ready to record again.
Trevor Sensor is the type of artist that, Spotify algorithm failing, you might discover in a fever dream, conjured up in a dark music club among theatre eccentrics. There’s something not quite belonging to the digital age in his sound, even if thematically he navigates the emotional landscape of the modern world. His music evokes artists such as Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Elliot Smith… The list is endless. But, paradoxically, this profusion of association comes about precisely because Sensor is a true original, and as such is so full of ideas that he breathes new life into classic sounds. In his latest album A Few Tears of Eros roots music and myriad popular genres are passed through a blender, to stimulating results further enriched by a cultural baggage…
Delving into the Great American Songbook of Howe Gelb, Sandworms is a new collection that rephrases and rephases the legacy of Giant Sand across generations. This release offers bold reinterpretations from Water from Your Eyes, Deradoorian, Jesca Hoop & John Parish, Holiday Ghosts, Lily Konigsberg, Ella Raphael, Monde UFO, The Golden Dregs, and Gently Tender.
…Giant Sandworms does a reasonably good job of covering the gamut, enlisting a diverse and notably young group of artists to reimagine 13 songs recorded between 1986 and 2013. They’re predominantly Giant Sand covers, with a few solo cuts mixed in. None of the covering artists are especially intuitive — no past collaborators, no strong and obvious lines of influence.
Making Room for the Light, Mae Powell’s debut for Karma Chief Records, is the campfire at dawn, when the firepit is replaced with the first stirring of day. Embers, ashes, and smoke of memory give way to percolating coffee and cast-iron breakfasts. Powell’s jazz-assured vocals wrap around the headphones with a gauzy dew, as shimmering chords and keys radiate with coming warmth. Its sound is dream, fully giving way to morning, shared with friends and lovers both absent and present.
Writing the album over a transitional period in her life, Powell’s sophomore album presents the singer/songwriter as both healer and healed, grounded by her connection to nature and sound, ever seeking out spaces to stretch and grow as an artist. The sketches that compose…
Georgia Harmer’s sophomore album, Eye of the Storm, is an empathetic exchange between past and future selves, and a deep breath of life into the veins of relationships over time. Where Harmer’s 2022 debut, Stay In Touch, chronicled introspection and growth, the heart of Eye of the Storm lies in the deeper matter of self-realization and understanding. It seeks to answer questions of what to carry, what to leave behind, and what to follow forward.
Self-produced by Georgia’s steady hand, the songs of Eye of the Storm are raw, real, vulnerable and detailed. The title track joins the idyllic “Can We Be Still,” the delicate and tender “Little Light,” and the deeply introspective “Take it On” singles that subtly piece together the holistic vision…
For anyone familiar with Schitt’s Creek, the show’s stripped-back Tina Turner cover (and Patrick’s declaration of love for David) marked a wonderfully emotional moment – an opinion clearly shared by Canadian singer Billianne. What she likely didn’t expect, however, was that her tender 2022 take on that same ‘The Best’ would soon translate to over 70 million streams.
Now, three years on from that huge turn, she’s taking that same delicate warmth and channelling it into a debut album that’s evocative and moving, dealing with the upheaval and changes that surround early interior lives. From the finger-picked opening vignette of ‘Modes I’ through to the more breezy indie-pop of ‘Baby Blue’ – via the harmony-drenched ‘Cassiopeia’ – her…
Bret McKenzie is a Grammy and Academy Award winning artist most well known for his band Flight of the Conchords and their eponymous television show. McKenzie is internationally renowned for singing and writing funny, strange, and unique songs primarily for film and television. Bret’s songs have been sung by Kermit the Frog, Celine Dion, Lizzo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brittany Howard, Homer and Lisa Simpson, Fred Armisan, Miss Piggy, Amy Adams, Jason Segal, Ricky Gervais, Benee, Isabela Merced, Spongebob Squarepants, Tony Bennett, Mickey Rooney, and more.
As a young adult Bret was an active part of the Wellington music scene playing in multiple bands across multiple genres. He was a founding member of the popular band The Black Seeds…
When it comes to Cass McCombs, there’s a risk of complacency. Not on his side – on Interior Live Oak, the Californian singer-songwriter is as watchful as ever – but from that of the listener, who after 11 albums of cosmically questing music might simply expect nothing less than a line as richly allusive as, “I was working as a soda jerk/Listening to old Panthers’ stories/Over lime rickeys and tuna fish”, or a song that spins around 19th-century Irish-Bavarian proto-burlesque superstar Lola Montez.
Steadily, however, Interior Live Oak becomes the kind of record it’s impossible to be casual about. After releasing 2024’s Seed Cake On New Year, a collection of unreleased music from around 2000, McCombs was inspired to return to his formative San Francisco stamping ground…
“I will fly around the world just to forget you” are the opening words of “It Hits Harder,” the first track on New Radiations. The song is about a farewell. The album ends with “Sad Satellite,” where the titular heavenly object is used as a metaphor for distance, when the gap is increasing between the narrator and the subject: the latter a character who is “sucking me dry” and “took me for ride”.
It’s not hard, then, to construe the tenth album from the Nashville-based Marissa Nadler as one permeated with partings – cleavages which create distance. If analysed, detachment can bring perspective and understanding. But Nadler’s lyrics instead seem to be a form of reportage, oblique vignettes setting-up New Radiations as a commentary on disconnection.
A companion album to 2024’s critically acclaimed My Light, My Destroyer, on My Light, My Massage Parlor Cassandra Jenkins conjures a wonderfully calming set of instrumental music/field recordings.
…For the insatiably curious songwriter, the world-building exercise of creating an album implies the existence of infinite wormholes that lie within. Quietly accompanying her primary releases, Cassandra Jenkins crafted companion albums — (An Overview on) An Overview on Phenomenal Nature (2022), and the soon-to-be-released My Light, My Massage Parlor. Listeners are invited to follow along on her side quests as she deepens her investigation of the paths not taken in her initial artistic statements. While her last follow-up revealed extended voice notes and songs from…