The Suitcase Junket is a one-man band powered by guitarist and singer-songwriter Matt Lorenz, whose first album, Sever and Lift (2010), told the world that, among other things, dudes who make music simultaneously with a guitar and other contraptions are still around. Taking his moniker from the suitcase that serves as a kick drum and bench, Lorenz spent the 2010s steadily releasing blues and roots albums that reflected his solitary approach. His 2020 album, The End is New, found Lorenz in the company of producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) and others, sanding down some of the rough edges of his sound and filling in corners normally left empty. It was a critical success blunted by timing. COVID effectively shut down any hope of touring. Happily, Lorenz became a father…
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As a duo, Ka Baird and Chris Ryan Williams present a study in contrasts. Baird, a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, favors density and percussive force, while Williams, a trumpeter, tends to work in subliminal textures and blurred, dissolving tones. They have a lot in common, too: Both use electronics to manipulate their sounds past the point of recognition, and both make music that has a spooky interiority, like a network of gradually constricting tunnels or a slowly flooding grotto. The two previously worked together on Baird’s Bearings: Soundtrack for the Bardos, an ultra-Bairdean work of uncompromising spiritual menace from 2024. Enthalpy, on which Williams receives co-billing, takes a more equitable approach. Though we get plenty of Baird’s…
The listener is easily startled by Wadada Leo Smith. The man has an aura about him that emanates from some other place, some other time, when the rule of law was set in stone. A time not too long ago when collective aspiration held us all enthralled. And the man who carried that stone is none other than the trumpeter himself.
Smith’s presence also has a mythical essence that, in and of itself, is hardly breaking news. But it is that sense of now that news delivers, breaking or not, that empowers the kick-off “Dark Energy” — a piece of music so rightly titled and performed — coiling through the hardest memory of when music stood bare. A time when fellow daredevils, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and drummer Marcus Gilmore cut their own paths alongside him,…
A Simple Man is album number 20 for American contemporary jazz saxophonist Boney James. It’s been an illustrious career for the saxophonist, producer, and composer who has received four Grammy nominations, a Soul Train Award, four gold-certified albums and, in 2024, he became the first artist to attain 20 number one singles on the smooth jazz charts. This is a back-to-basics set that maintains the seamless meld of jazz, R&B, and neo-soul that is his trademark. James produced the record and composed nine of its ten tracks. His guest list is also impressive.
Set opener “Dreams” finds him playing flute, tenor, and piano. He twins reeds and winds on the melodic vamp, illuminated by his sensual piano, an economical bassline, and a slippery…
Multiple BMA nominee and daughter of the legendary Rufus Thomas, sister of Carla Thomas, Vaneese Thomas remains one of the more elegant, yet soulful representatives of soul-blues. Vaneese has branched out from her Memphis roots to deliver contemporary blues, gospel, R&B, and a thriving career as a background vocalist for the biggest rock and pop stars. She’s been at her craft for over four decades, working also as a writer, producer, and arranger. Thomas has never lost her Memphis roots although most of her recent recordings have originated in the New York area. That sense of earned wisdom, an inherent feel for the blues, and the ability to naturally, even effortlessly ride the grooves, comes through on Window to My Soul, one of her…
Rhode Island native, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Phil Madeira is celebrating 50 years as a professional musician. Madeira is likely best known as the multi-instrumentalist in the Red Dirt Boys, Emmylou Harris’s backup band for the past 18 years. Americana aficionados recognize him as the steadfast keyboardist and guitarist for Buddy Miller and Julie Miller in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
What many don’t know is that Madeira, also an author and painter, has released over 15 solo albums, covering roots, jazz, country, and folk. Perhaps he is just too versatile, if there is such a thing. He’s played both the Newport Folk and Newport Jazz Festivals, and he’s been beloved in his adopted town of Nashville. Yet, besides..
…This deluxe reissue returns Paulusma’s celebrated debut to the spotlight, pairing the original 11-track album with five bonus recordings from the same prolific writing period. Three of these – ‘Orion’s Belt’, ‘Two Stars’, and ‘Leave Your Keys’ – originally appeared as sought-after B-sides during the album’s 2004 single campaign, while ‘My Errant Knight’ and ‘Pentecostosis’, written and recorded alongside the album itself, are released here for the very first time.
Nearly 35 years on, and the folk and twining soft rock of the early ’70s is being birthed again in a stylized new version. Suddenly young women with unruly mops of dark hair and a flair for dusky vocal phrasing are handily making their way in pop music. They’re clad in comfy…
On Starcleaner Reunion’s warm, fuzzy debut, space is the place. Cooper Edens’ 1979 book The Starcleaner Reunion is an illustrated children’s adventure about a dandyish, top-hatted cohort – the starcleaners – who attempt to restore the darkened night sky with nothing but soapy water and self-belief. It’s the kind of obscure IYKYK story that sticks with you deep into adulthood, all hand-drawn starscapes and galactic whimsy, and so it makes complete sense that the book’s Goodreads page alludes to a “ballet in the works.”
When you name your band, you don’t necessarily want people to dissect it at every opportunity. Sometimes you just pick a few words and crack on. But Starcleaner Reunion just so happened to pick the perfect name to evoke their music.
About a decade passed between the release of Australian artist Spike Fuck‘s breakthrough 2016 Smackwave EP and his debut studio full-length, Evidence, and he lived several lifetimes in those ten years. From the beginning, Spike Fuck’s songs were visceral and intense, and they reflected his lived experience — struggles with addiction that included cycles of relapse, mental health issues, conflicts of identity with gender, religion, and more — and all of it bled through in songs that sounded somewhere between some lost New York Dolls material and the heaviest Patti Smith record never made. After releasing Smackwave, Spike got signed to a label and dropped from that label, lost his father, struggled with addiction, transitioned to living as a trans woman for…
Barcelona joins Helsinki 2003 as the second concert from the Rising tour released in the Live Archive series, though the two releases stand apart in meaningful ways. As outlined in the essay that accompanied its release, Helsinki was liberated from a proprietary DSD recording system used across the 2002-03 tour, though curiously (and fortunately) not Barcelona.
The Palau San Jordi show was captured on half-inch digital multitrack tape, like the format used on the Reunion tour. Why the change? Perhaps because the show had been earmarked for a live television broadcast and a future DVD. That would explain why Brendan O’Brien, who produced The Rising, was on hand (this night only, it seems) to record the concert on what we’ll assume…
Amid the praise lavished on their roistering live shows, Fat Dog drew a small number of doubters with their 2024 debut album, WOOF.. Some dubbed their dance-punk eruptions “trite”, others one-note. Tight, fresh and frequently expansive, the south Londoners’ second album issues often jubilant answers to such doubts. While a US tour left the band faintly frayed at the edges, a quick return to recording has maintained their momentum. Better yet, they channel a gathering capacity for connection into the tunes and lyrics of Cancel Me (I’m Tired), scoping out room to roam within their well-honed good-time vigour.
Opener ‘Smile & Wave’ implies as much, eschewing the portentous overtures of WOOF. as it kicks off as if out of nowhere, a band caught in…
It’s not a coincidence that Wishy interpolate both “Femme Fatale” by the Velvet Underground and a Bible class singalong within the same track. They never sing the actual words to “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, down in my heart” — that Sunday school staple you may know from The Simpsons — but the sentiment is heavily implied when the melody tumbles over the outro of “Mona Lisa.” Nature’s Pill, Wishy’s second album, is all about love’s dangerous intoxication (fatale of course meaning deadly) and how, when it goes south, you’ve got everything you need within yourself. The track’s final lyric: “Still life so incomplete now / I’m filling it out myself.” Another case in point, from the record’s closing moments: “Heaven is a state of mind.”
The Indianapolis quintet hasn’t turned to…
Collected Classics: Rare & Live is a 13-track compilation album by legendary singer-songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson. Released as an exclusive free CD accompanying the November 2026 issue of Uncut Magazine, the compilation spans rare studio tracks and standout live recordings curated with commentary from Thompson himself.
…”We speak to the guitarist, singer and songwriter at length inside the issue, but he also took the time to talk us through this compilation, a handy refresher before the release of new album Hippies, Thugs and Heroes.
Thompson himself tends to think in terms of songs rather than albums, so he’s relaxed about compilations of his music.
For the most recent offering on Easy Eye Sound, the Swiss-Ecuadorian siblings Hermanos Gutiérrez wanted to craft an instrumental love letter to South America. The resulting ten-track breezy affair, Los Ojos Del Cóndor, is an elegant journey through these soundscapes.
Alejandro & Estevan Gutiérrez worked in Nashville with studio friends and producer Dan Auerbach, keeping a visual cue in mind while recording: a lone condor soaring across the Andes. That description, as well as the brothers’ travel and heritage, led to the album’s instrumental offerings, which mix nylon-string plucking and light rhythms with moaning organ and chango guitar strumming, an instrument straight from the Andes.
The opening “Canto Andino” sets the tone and…
Israel Nash has spent the past twenty years painting the familiar vistas of Americana in startling new colors. From his lo-fi New York Town (2009) to the Horse-With-No-Name heights of 2013’s Rain Plains and the Wilco-flavored anthems on Lifted (2018), Nash lets his influences spill over his songs while pushing forward into the genre’s future. On Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Nash takes his sensibility both backward and forward in reimagining the landmark 1968 record by The Byrds. Like a master archivist restoring a sepia film to Technicolor, Nash breathes new dimension into these classic songs, rendering them timeless.
In 1968, the Byrds found a new voice in Gram Parsons, who was hired to play keyboard but spurred the band toward the West.
Contemporary blues-rock powerhouse Jovin Webb returns with his second album, Son of a Sinner, on Blind Pig Records. Produced by multi-Grammy winner Tom Hambridge and recorded in Nashville, the 11-song collection finds the talented vocalist, songwriter, and drummer digging into stories about life in all its flawed, messy, vulnerable glory. There’s plenty of honesty here, but Webb also knows when to lighten things up with a little fun and humor.
Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and shaped by Southern culture and the church, Webb sings from experience. He’s multi-faceted–soulful, smooth and sorrowful, hard-edged and gritty. His songs on Son of a Sinner, several co-written with Hambridge, are equal parts swagger and grace.
Both solo and with The Monkees – and various permutations thereof – Davy Jones spent decades on the road sharing the music he loved all over the world. While a Monkees setlist would be painstakingly constructed, the solo Jones was far more freewheeling, incorporating new and old songs and crossing genre lines with abandon. Now 7A Records celebrates the late singer’s legacy with a new live compendium.
Let Me Entertain You: On the Road with Davy boasts two dozen concert recordings spanning 1979- 2003 from venues in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. Entertainment was in David’s bones: the Manchester native had been entertaining audiences since his youth. As a teenager in Great Britain, he’d appeared on…
…includes two unreleased tracks, era singles, and full-album demos.
It’s no shock that a band made up of former members of Deerhunter and Carnivores would be good, since both those bands are. It’s more of a shock just how good Omni is. With ex-Deerhunter guitarist Frankie Broyles and ex-Carnivores bassist /vocalist Philip Frobos writing a batch of songs that combine the best aspects of brainy, hooky bands like Josef K, Television, and Magazine, then recording them with another ex-Carnivore, Billy Mitchell, on drums, Omni’s Deluxe is a stunning debut. Recorded in sparkling lo-fi by yet another ex-Carnivore, Nathaniel Higgins, the trio mostly sticks to the basic guitar-bass-drums-vocals setup as the album careens from one…