The lineage of Chicago blues slide guitarists runs from Elmore James to Hound Dog Taylor to J.B. Hutto to Lil’ Ed Williams. Williams’ career, at 49+ years, is the longest of any. Of course, many of you know that he learned his trade from “Uncle J.B” Hutto. Williams’ band, The Blues Imperials, has been together for an astounding 38 years, unheard of for a blues unit. Not only that, but they are the longest continual entity in the Alligator catalog. Other artists joined the label before 1986, but they had stints at other labels before returning to Alligator. Slideways is the band’s tenth album for the label.
Fan favorites at live shows and festivals, their followers have affectionately been dubbed “Ed Heads.” What separates the charismatic,…
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Few artists are as closely tied to the foundation of country music as Willie Nelson. Before the outlaw movement, before the braids and bandanas, Nelson was a Nashville songwriter absorbing the work of Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, and Merle Travis.
Originally released in 2010 and produced by T Bone Burnett, Country Music is his direct salute to that lineage. It was his first album made entirely of country standards, a tribute to the songs that shaped him before he became a household name.
The current reissue from Craft Recordings and HighTone Records gives the album renewed focus. HighTone’s relaunch has centered on core Americana titles, and this record fits squarely within that tradition. Country Music opens with Nelson’s own 1959 single…
…This anniversary release of the band’s first EP includes three additional tracks: remastered demos of “31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues,” previously titled as “Tonight I’m So Down,” and “Lonesome Valley,” recorded at Echo Park Studios in Indiana during the ‘Hard to Love a Man’ sessions, as well as “One Thin Dime,” recorded during the Black Ram sessions at Sound of Music Recording Studios in Richmond, Virginia.
Let’s begin at the end, with the cover of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” that closes Magnolia Electric Co.‘s Hard to Love a Man EP. Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner’s always elegant guitar work makes it clear that the song is probably a barnstormer live, probably saved for the first encore so that the band can cut loose…
Album release dates are usually arbitrary, utilitarian business decisions, devoid of any tangible meaning. But once in a great while, an artist releases an album on or near a date that dovetails perfectly with the album’s theme. Such is the case with Keegan McInroe’s eighth solo album Neon John, which was released on Friday, February 13th. Juxtapose that superstitiously unlucky date with the next day, which just happens to be Valentine’s Day, and you have the dominant theme of the album-love sought, love found (or not), love lost, wrapped in a musical salve that feels light-heartedly melancholy yet somehow comforting.
The album opens with the line “Looking for love in all the wrong windows” sung in the familiar melody of Johnny Lee’s ‘Looking for Love’…
UNHINGED is Sophie Gault’s third album after Delusions of Grandeur (2022) and 2024’s Baltic Street Hotel. The title comes from her own view of herself: “I’m unhinged and a little bit crazy”, and this gives some idea of the energy of the record. It is rather traditional female-fronted country-rock, but done with such verve and brightness that it really wins you over and puts a smile on your face. And it doesn’t do any harm that Gault has a great country voice.
She has written five of the ten tracks here, but the first track is a rollicking Buck Owens cover, ‘Love’s Gonna Live Here’, with slide guitar and country licks, that improves on the original. This staple of her live set is a great start to the record. Following is ‘Pocket Change’, with a bit of a twang in…
A blurry Facebook clip posted by salsa enthusiast Jesús Rojas in December of 2023 captures Venezuelan orchestra El Gran Grupo celebrating their 44th anniversary. Three years later the band is still doing what they love most: Playing salsa.
Born in the neighborhood of Petare — one of the largest shanty towns in Latin America — El Gran Grupo began as a sextet called Los Tigres del Ritmo. Dressed in vests and Oxford pants, rocking afros and thick mustaches, they looked a bit like a rock band. But instead of electric guitars, they wielded congas, güiro, and claves. Though they played mostly local gigs, the group caught the attention of well respected composer Orlando Briceño, who already had at least one record out as a salsa bandleader. Briceño saw…
Some albums become special through repeated listening: they grow on you, opening up over time to reveal more complex layers and hidden depths. Some are special because they represent a certain memorable point in the listener’s life: a graduation, a wedding, a death. Some are simply great from the word go, world-changing works of artistic genius. But very few come sprinkled with the kind of magic dust that coats the new album by Georgia Shackleton. This is an album with a story behind it, and that story is worth telling because it directly impacts the music. A distant relative of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, Georgia recently came into possession of the Shackleton Violin, an instrument made from the floorboards of Ernest’s former home in Edinburgh.
Catrin Finch has been at the top her field for a long time now. The Welsh harpist was appointed to the ancient office of Royal Harpist by Prince Charles in 2000, was nominated for a Classical Brit Award in 2004 and her World Music collaborations with Seckou Keita resulted in their winning the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Duo.
After her three acclaimed albums with Keita, she released the striking Double You with Irish fiddler and classical violinist Aoife Ni Bhrian in 2023. And now, striking out with her first solo album in a decade, she turns to her self – in fact, to her 13-year-old self – in this beautiful set of pieces accompanied by short pieces of prose in the form of letters to herself, and archive family photos that focus on the young Katrin, and…
Ben Vince plays his saxophone like a man with one foot in another dimension. His tone is searching, mystical, molten; his penchant for looping and layering evokes blurry shapes emerging from a thick mist. No stave could contain him: Even the sweetest tone might peel off into a harried bleat. If the wind instrument’s magic is to turn breath into seemingly solid form, Vince is just as likely to wrest a stray note as it passes across his reed and dissolve it back into air.
On his early records, the London musician made do with saxophone alone, looping and layering his instrument into billowing expressions of foghorn melancholy. He cut a profoundly romantic figure: One imagined him out wandering the heath, half shrouded in fog, braving…
It’s hardly fair to say guitarist/composer Julian Lage saved his best work for Blue Note Records. After all, he released a handful of memorable albums, such as Arclight, prior to joining the iconic jazz label.
Still, there’s no doubt Lage has stretched himself since issuing Modern Lore and Love Hurts roughly a decade ago, and, for this fifth outing on the venerable imprimatur, Scenes from Above, he continues the consistently courageous expression of his creativity, recruiting idiosyncratic keyboardist John Medeski to join drummer Kenny Wollesen and bassist Jorge Roeder.
This lineup offers great potential for the provocative mix of musical personalities, and sure enough, sparks fly from the get-go on “Opal.” Initially introduced, then pulled…
Bring Out the Foos: Live 1996, released by Rhino Records, opens a raw and revealing window into a pivotal moment in Ween’s evolution. Drawn from previously unreleased archival recordings, the album documents Gene and Dean Ween’s 1996 summer run opening for Foo Fighters during Dave Grohl’s first major tour with his then-new band. It captures Ween at their most stripped-down and unpredictable, operating on instinct, chemistry, and sheer nerve.
Historically, this release matters because it preserves the final documented chapter of Ween performing live as a two-piece. Backed primarily by a DAT machine (with occasional live bass), the duo leans hard into the lo-fi chaos and humor that define their early years.
The Neal Morse Band’s fifth studio album L.I.F.T. is nilled as a record that “stands toe to toe” with the group’s rated 2016 LP The Similitude Of A Dream. It’s another virtuosic concept album that continues the NMB’s tradition of spiritually-themed storytelling.
“There’s an arc to it, but I suppose it’s really about belonging,” Morse tells Prog of the follow-up to 2021’s Innocence & Danger. “You start out feeling like you belong with your parents, then you break from them and you might not feel like you really belong in the world. It talks about reaching for God or a higher power or however you want to put it, and God bringing us back to wholeness.”
Asked what the letters in the new album’s title stand for, Morse says it’s open…
Holyoke, Massachusetts post-punk outfit Landowner aren’t the type to sit still. Their sound is agitated and animated, their relentless rippers rife with taut basslines, manic shouts and wiry guitar riffs. And, fittingly for a band that’s always in motion, they’ve returned with another new album, Assumption, which is out via Exploding in Sound, and rife with abstract meditations on modern life, surging rhythms and a hypercaffeinated and infectious jangle-punk sound that’s as fun as it is anxious.
Landowner guitarist and vocalist Dan Shaw went long, breaking down each of the songs on the group’s latest album, explaining some of the origins of the songs—like how a handful of them were written during paternity leave…
Many bands take time to find what they entered into the industry for: fun and freedom. What began as a hobby may lose its enjoyability once it becomes a full-time commitment, with the introduction of strict deadlines and outside involvement.
With Liverpool alt act STONE, this is where they ended up coming to during the run of their debut record Fear Life For A Lifetime; an outstanding album but one they were always going to look to improve upon. In the following years, with big changes leading to bigger challenges, they would work towards a more independent and representative collection of hits. Enter Autonomy.
As the title is to be believed, this is a record that STONE have made with more of their own…
The long-overdue revival of Bim Sherman’s catalog begins here. These essential recordings will become widely available again for the first time in decades, opening a new chapter in the appreciation of one of Jamaica’s most distinctive voices and representing a major moment for reggae and dub aficionados around the world. This reissue series will not only preserve his legacy but will also offer listeners the chance to experience the depth and timeless resonance of Sherman’s work in its full glory.
Bim Sherman-born Jarret Lloyd Vincent, in Westmoreland, Jamaica—holds a unique place in reggae history. Emerging in the mid 70s, his ethereal, haunting vocal style quickly set him apart from his contemporaries. He was soon collaborating with the top producers…
The Guy Hamper Trio was formed by Billy Childish, after a chat with his friend James Taylor (Hammond organ).
Billy and James had played respectively in The Milkshakes and The Prisoners, often sharing the same bill in the early 80’s, leading to Billy’s blues ensemble The Natural Born Lovers being the support act for the early shows of The James Taylor Quartet.
The Guy Hamper Trio is: Billy Childish on guitar, his wife Julie on bass and Wolf on drums – who as it happens was the drummer in the original incarnation of JTQ – and of course features James Taylor on Hammond organ.
The Guy Hamper Trio provide a bottom end, Blues-influenced instrumental mayhem for those…
The newest release from Buffalo, NY instrumental jamband, Organ Fairchild, continues their tripped-out grooves mixed with smooth flowing vibes that lovers of their live shows have come to cherish. BOOM! is a sweet collection that takes the listener on a journey with the band, knowing that the tracks will shift and morph when the group enters their natural habitat, the stage.
For this studio effort, Organ Fairchild (Joe Bellanti- organ and keyboards, Corey Kertzie- drums and percussion, and Dave Ruch- guitar) worked with Justin Guip (Hot Tuna, Levon Helm), who recorded, mixed, and co-produced, and Alan Evans (Soulive), who mastered the record.
Opener “Westside Bowl” mixes smooth lounge-ready sounds with chicken scratchy guitar…
By 1962, Wes Montgomery had already changed the way jazz guitar sounded. A self-taught player from Indianapolis, he built his style around his thumb instead of a pick, creating a warm, rounded tone that cut through without ever sounding harsh. His use of octaves became a signature, but what really set him apart was his sense of structure; his solos felt organized, intentional, and grounded in melody. Full House, recorded live at Tsubo in Berkeley, captures Montgomery in a straight-ahead setting, backed by Johnny Griffin on sax, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. It’s one of the clearest documents of his small-group strength. As part of Craft Recordings ‘ Original Jazz Classics series, Full House is being reissued on 180-gram vinyl…
Drummer/composer Booker Stardrum delivers a new powerful solo album Close-up On The Outside, his first for We Jazz Records. The new record sees Stardrum (also a member of SML and frequent collaborator of Lisel, Photay, Horse Lords, Wendy Eisenberg, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma) doubling down on the earthy tactility of human sound and communication while also exploring rich, electroacoustic landscapes. The album, released on LP and digitally, involves Stardrum’s close collaborators Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Logan Hone and Michael Coleman.
While he now lives and works near Kingston, New York, Booker Stardrum made the first notes heard on the new album at an artist residency…
Much has been written about the Transatlantic fallout of punk rock, with every crevice of the era meticulously scanned in the hope of a lost classic. Whilst Circle X’s fractious run, two albums and two EPs, over a span of seventeen years, might not signify complete unknown status to seasoned crate-diggers, their minimal place in the history books belies their brilliance.
Formed in 1978, in Louisville, Kentucky – by brothers Rik and David Letendre, alongside Tony Pinotti and Bruce Witsiepe – Circle X emerged from the ashes of the city’s very first punk bands No Fun and The I-Holes, surfing the shockwaves created by punk rock. The band swiftly relocated. First to New York, then Dijon, and back to New York again, all the time evolving and mutating…