Let’s recite five famous blues clubs, present and past – Checkerboard Lounge, Buddy Guy’s Legends, Kingston Mines, Blue Door Cafe, and Theresa’s Lounge. The educated guess is that you’ve heard of at least four of them.
Surprisingly, our subject club, the long shuttered Theresa’s Lounge, which is probably one of the best-known of the five, has had the fewest live recordings, only one: that of Junior Wells Live at Theresa’s (1975). Yet, the storied club was where so many legends cut their teeth.
The basement club was the haven of legends – Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Hubert Sumlin, Earl Hooker, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Hound Dog Taylor, Otis Rush, Magic Slim, Little Walter, Otis Spann, and countless…
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…featuring 8 bonus tracks including rare studio recordings + iconic live performances.
Kaleo (a Hawaiian word for “the sound”), are a group of talented young rock/blues musicians from (where else would you expect?) Mosfellsbaer, outside Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik, and only recently relocated to Austin, Texas, in 2015.
Having riled up a significant following in their home country as well amassing a horde of streams on Spotify, the band signed with Atlantic Records, and now we have their first complete gift to American listeners.
A/B sounds like a greatest hits album. In a way it kind of is, as it draws from Kaleo’s Icelandic self-titled debut and the handful of singles that have been released in America.
By his own impeccable standards, The Red Castle was one of the most unguarded releases of John Southworth‘s career. A spiritual ramble through grief and wonder, its hybrid of ancient and modern instrumentation felt unexpectedly poignant and immersive. Following the death of his father, it also marked a life chapter and presented a subsequent threshold to somewhere new.
Rain from the East arrives just seven months later and amplifies, both figuratively and literally, Southworth’s signature style in surprising ways. It’s a confident album, compact in its arrangements, but played with ferocity and intention. Like much of his best work, it plucks lesser-heard elements from esoteric subgenres and shakes them into a cocktail only he can serve.
With Spring Flood, Mariam Wallentin and Vestnorsk Jazzensemble present a new collective work in which improvisation, poetry, and vivid imagery merge into a living, organic expression.
The album originates from Wallentin’s stay in Basel in the spring of 2023. There, with the Rhine as a constant sonic backdrop, a series of diary notes began to take shape. As Mariam recalls: “The Rhine flowed and murmured day and night outside the hotel, and the riverbank was covered with small flowers and trees already in bloom. And I encountered spring in a new place. I saw the green breaking through and the water rushing along, accompanied by entirely different scents and temperaments than at home. The familiar and the unknown hand in hand.
Chrysalis Records has launched its Chrysalis Global imprint with an instrumental debut, Guitari Baro (Guitar Conversations), led by a Mande griot trio. The trio pairs master balafonist Lassana Diabaté, with guitarists Gaoussou Kouyaté and Kerfala Diabaté. It is a rare dialogue between balafon and guitar by hereditary West African jali musicians. Notably, this is a pan-African exchange linking Malian tradition and Guinean guitar work. The material draws on Mande idioms while nodding to jazz, Congolese rumba, rock, Guinean dance bands, and Cuban music.
… Co-produced by Dudu Sarr, Lucy Durán and Pape Armand Boye, and recorded in a single session in Dakar, guitarists Kouyaté and Diabaté are brilliantly underpinned by the subtle…
Sometimes, you just have to let things go and while it can be uncomfortable, it can also be incredibly liberating – and the Embrace boys are championing this philosophy superbly in Avalanche, their ninth studio album and their first release in four years. When you stop anticipating the big moments and let it flow, the need to have your life figured out swiftly fades away. It becomes about the small things – the ones you’d otherwise miss. The name of the album is a metaphor for the force of feeling when the little moments all snowball together and how it’s important to celebrate those smaller imperfect moments of life as opposed to being laser focused on the ‘big picture’. It was conceived on the idea that life doesn’t pause for permission; it keeps on…
Bruce Springsteen has been opening his shows with a prayer. He and the E Street Band walk onstage quietly. He steps to the mic as they atmospherically play behind him. Before a single song is performed he simply speaks to the audience. “We begin the night with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We pray for an end to this conflict and for their safe return,” he begins, opening with a sentiment most anyone should be able to agree with. It continues: “The E Street Band is here tonight in celebration and defense of the American ideals and values that have sustained our country for 250 years. We are here to call upon the righteous power of art and music and rock ‘n’ roll in these dangerous times.” Then, he gets a little more pointed: “Our…
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band delivered nearly three hours of righteous and rocking music — and a tip for the summer of 2026 — at the group’s Tuesday, May 5 show at the UBS Arena in Elmont, New York. “Don’t go to the beach and play with any seashells,” said Springsteen, referencing the indictment of former FBI head James Comey for a social media post of seashells forming the numbers “86 47.”
The advice came during Springsteen’s This Is Happening Now speech, where the transgressions of the Trump administration is cited as the opening chords of “My City of Ruins” is played. “Our justice department has completely abdicated its independence and it takes its marching orders directly from corrupt White House,”…
On their seventh studio album, These Are the Days That Turn in to Years, Pharis & Jason Romero, following 2022’s Tell ‘Em You Were Gold, channel four years of living, touring, parenting, and banjo-building into their most open-hearted set yet. Tracked in their riverside Horsefly barn, the album feels lived-in and luminous, rich with the stories and small revelations that define their world. This time around, the music launches with a thick bass spine that is impossible not to tap your foot to, as ‘Big Time World’ dances the album into life with an amiable fiddle swing for decorative delight, giving the sense of song being sung with skips, sways and carefree abandonment. ‘Last Cal’l is bedded into a swampy, muddy banjo texture. That bass and fiddle are essential once more on…
Lately, the Backrooms have felt inescapable. The breakout horror movie now reigns as A24’s highest-grossing film to date, but the lore bears repeating: In 2019, a a drab office space with sickly yellow wallpaper, photographed from an askew angle, was shared anonymously on 4chan. A comment suggested this place lies on the fringe of reality and you could slip into it and get lost forever. The post quickly became a vaunted piece of creepypasta, influencing everything from Severance to Playboi Carti, and it has been adopted as everyday parlance to describe any eerie, liminal space. A 16-year-old Kane Parsons ran with the concept, producing found-footage-style short films on YouTube set in this nebulous purgatory, inspired by a lineage of plucky upstarts…
Remember when dubstep was good? Paris-born producer and DJ Beatrice M. certainly does: Their music calls back to the genre’s mid-2000s South London days, when dub implied reggae, Skream was a youthful prodigy, and Sonny Moore was the singer in a hardcore band.
It was probably inevitable that this sound would come round again, with music’s proverbial 20-year fashion cycle once again raising its head. But Sinking, Beatrice M.’s debut album, released on the none-more-cerebral dubstep label Tectonic, has more to it than simple revival. On the one hand, the record is full of the recognizable traits of classic dubstep — the reggae-inspired half-step beat; basslines that are warm and corporeal rather than dumb and abrasive; and…
Montreal’s BIG|BRAVE recorded in grief or in hope at producer Seth Manchester’s Machines with Magnets studio, with touring bassist Liam Andrews contributing to the group’s recording sessions for the first time. The result is the most texturally detailed, sonically overwhelming BIG|BRAVE record to date. Nearly every moment is bristling with blown-out distortion, yet it’s shaped so that there’s enough space for all the elements to breathe instead of cancel each other out.
On opener “what may be the kindest way to leave,” waves of doom-laden noise set in, with Robin Wattie’s manipulated vocals floating in the center, and when the bass pierces through towards the end, the impact is felt deeply. Then, “a shape of shame” gently rocks back and…
Working with guitars, drum machine, sampler, self-built electronics, and all manner of percussion, BASIC, the trio of Chris Forsyth, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Douglas McCombs, synthesize the vast influences and distinct histories of each member, producing a boundary-less, rhythm-forward amalgam of art rock, trance jazz, collective improvisation, and humming electronics on their new eponymous full-length for No Quarter.
Philadelphia’s Chris Forsyth, known for his lyrical guitar compositions and mercurial improvisations as leader of the Solar Motel Band, founded BASIC in 2022 naming the project in homage to the 1984 Robert Quine/Fred Maher album “Basic,” yes, but also to indicate a desire to get down to fundamentals rhythmically and musically.
A landmark recording in British modern jazz. The 50th anniversary of Kaleidoscope of Rainbows by Neil Ardley. Newly remastered with new liner notes by Sid Smith.
This marvellous work completed a trilogy of works composed by Neil Ardley that had begun with The Greek Variations and continued with A Symphony Of Amaranths, works which were based on a sequence of notes that provided the basis for composition and improvisation.
Originally released in 1976, Kaleidoscope Of Rainbows was a series of pieces based on the five note scale of Balinese Gamelan music. The recording sessions featured contributions from such luminaries as Ian Carr (Nucleus), Paul Buckmaster, Barbara Thompson…
A superstar of Tzadik’s Radical Jewish Culture and the mastermind of the popular band Pharaoh’s Daughter, Basya Schechter returns with her greatest work yet, a gorgeous and sensual musical setting of the Biblical “Song of Songs.” Sung in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Arabic, Spanish, and French, Basya has put her heart and soul into this project and it is evident in every song, solo, and arrangement. Eighteen years in the making, this is a towering achievement by one of the most passionate, sincere, and creative musicians in Jewish music today. Songs of Desire is an utter delight!“
Pharaoh’s Daughter is a genre-bending “world folk-rock” 8 piece ensemble led by vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Basya Schechter. Formed in 1995, the band merges Hasidic chants…
When MONO recorded their previous album, OATH, with longtime production partner and friend, Steve Albini in 2023, they never fathomed that it would be the final studio album they made together. Albini tragically died the following year, and that loss left an incalculable void in the lives of not just everyone who ever knew Steve, but everyone with an attachment to any of the thousands of records he helped bring into world over the past four decades. He brought a clarity to the chaos, and a selfless sense of service to art and artists that was unrivaled. On both a personal and practical level, the loss left MONO faced with profound grief and uncertainty. Albini had become a fundamental part of MONO’s unmistakable sound, and the thought of replacing him was daunting…
Hit That Perfect Beat: The London Records Story is a double-CD companion to a podcast of the same name, charting the history of the label from the early 1980s, after the British branch of Decca Records was acquired by PolyGram. Though the label was reopened in the 2010s, the compilation stops in the early 2000s, bringing highlights from more than 20 years of hit releases.
The set starts out in the new wave era, with a few classics like Bananarama’s enduring “Cruel Summer” and Bronski Beat’s queer anthem “Smalltown Boy,” along with U.K. hits by acts drawing from folk (the Bluebells, Hothouse Flowers) and soul (Total Contrast, Carmel). Bronski Beat appear again with the compilation’s namesake tune, and leader Jimmy Somerville’s…
Having a solo project has been Josh Conway’s dream since he was a child. Between then and now, he has found international acclaim with The Marías, of which he is the drummer, primary producer and co-writer of nearly all of their material. With this outfit, Conway broadcast his distinctive production style, blurring bedroom-pop and dream-pop hallmarks with psychedelic undertones. There is an ethereal, understated and cohesive quality to The Marías, whilst still retaining a penchant for pop capacity and heterogeneous production. As many listeners of Conway will likely have come from The Marías’ fanbase, there will be trepidation about how similar it may sound, how far he will drift from the band sonically, or whether his production style works without his band.
Nicholas Krgovich and Joseph Shabason’s shared musical journey began in 2020 when, along with Chris Harris, they released Philadelphia, one of that year’s best and most highly acclaimed albums. In the six years since, the pair have joined forces with a series of other notable collaborators, including M. Sage and, most recently, Japanese avant-pop heroes Tenniscoats. Four Days in June, though a Shabason and Krogovich album by name, sees the pair enlist a wide range of musicians, including fiddle and banjo player Sam Amidon, guitarist Thom Gill, bassist/keyboardist Bram Gielen and drummer Phil Melanson. Krgovich sings and writes the lyrics, while Shabason plays synth, piano, sax and flute. The result is an album of subtle, often delicate layers, borrowing…
In addition to her delicate, spacious arrangements; gentle, articulate vocals; and affection for unusual melodies and harmonic progressions, Vermont singer/songwriter Ruth Garbus has become known over the years for her eclectic approach to assembling albums. The onetime member of acid folk group Feathers and indie pop outfit Happy Birthday — both of which also featured King Tuff’s Kyle Thomas — added quirky touches like finger cymbals, vocoder, synthesizer, and samples of a Rodgers & Hammerstein song to her mostly folk-oriented second solo LP, Kleinmeister. Her third album, the Thomas-produced Profound, navigates wistfully earnest material like “The Lost Soul” (“Everybody seems to want some…thing/Everybody seems to know”), the humorously…