Nashville-by-way-of-Philly musician Langhorne Slim has released more than half a dozen records blending folk, Americana, and the occasional indie-pop song. But five years after Strawberry Mansion — a deeply personal, post-pandemic record that in part documented his journey to sobriety, delivered through often delicately beautiful musical movements — he has found his way to a louder amp and strapped on an electric guitar for his next offering.
Appropriately enough, he’s tapped producer Sam F. Kiszka, whose group Greta Van Fleet is one of the biggest guitar bands of the past decade. The result is a surprisingly natural evolution for Slim, keeping his deep lyrics at the core of these songs.
Even the recording process was a step out…
Latest Entries »
…The remixed and remastered expanded edition of ‘Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong’ includes ten previously unreleased bonus tracks presented as a ‘mini’ album.
Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong is the debut album by the London-based duo Woo. Originally issued on the Sunshine Series imprint in May 1982, it was subsequently picked up for a 1987 US release by the LA-based Independent Project Records label. After this, Woo’s second album, It’s Cosy Inside, came out in 1989 on Independent Project Records. There was no UK version of the follow-up album back then; a US reissue on Drag City followed in 2012.
When Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong appeared in the UK in 1982,…
When quintet Imarhan emerged onto the world stage with their first City Slang release ten years ago, they stood out for their keen melodic sensibilities within the international tishoumaren scene. Hailing from the southern Algerian oasis city of Tamanrasset, they offer a distinct iteration of what has been referred to as desert blues, in which they adorn the melancholy core of the genre with often intricate lines and flourishes that recall popular styles of the Arab Maghreb.
Their fourth album, Essam (“lightning”), takes their flair for the luscious even further, as producer Emile Papandreou (of the eccentric French electropop duo UTO) extends the group’s sound with ethereal modular synthesizers. As always, Imarhan proves to be exceptional at balancing…
It’s hard to believe that James Hunter has been recording for almost four decades now. His Off the Fence is his eleventh studio album and debut for Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound after years in the Dap Tone stable. Ironically, Daptone’s co-founder, Gabriel Roth, produced, not Auerbach. It’s refreshing to see an album without multiple guests as Hunter reconvenes with his longtime band, The James Hunter Six. Oh, there is one guest, Hunter’s mentor, Van Morrison, who duets with Hunter on the jump blues “Ain’t That a Trip.” Otherwise, it’s strictly the James Hunter Six who render Hunter’s dozen penned tunes. It’s the same James Hunter we’ve come to know – smooth vocals, a touch of wit, grit from the band, and R&B grooves that Hunter dubs Northern…
Pianist and composer Craig Taborn, known for his shockingly powerful technique and his ability to traverse post-modern jazz, contemporary classical music, and indie electronics, moves fluidly between structure and freedom. The six tracks on Dream Archives — four originals and two covers — are smartly conceived, finding fresh sonic angles and probing inventive approaches to rhythm. Working in a trio format with cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer/vibraphonist Ches Smith, the colorfully chameleonic Taborn adds another compelling chapter to his already rich catalogue.
“Coordinates for the Absent” oozes lyrical introspection and nocturnal delicacy, captivating through carefully traced electronics, floating vibraphone, bowed cello, and…
Throughout history, most religions and cultures have a rough idea about how the world might end. Abrahamic ones, like Christianity, Judaism and Islam prophesy their own individual doomsdays, fronted by damning omnipotence, while Dharmic religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism believe a new world will replace ours when it kicks the bucket. For Sleaford Mods, though, the world has already been diagnosed as terminal.
This decline is precisely what drives Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn’s latest studio album, The Demise of Planet X. In Britain’s slow pitch drop towards the £9 meal deal, don’t expect any large-scale Armageddon, nor a spiritual rebirth: The apocalypse has already happened, and all we’re left with is Fred Again, artisan…
There are at least three ideal situations in which to listen to Tragic Magic, the gentle, contemplative new collaborative album from the ambient composer Julianna Barwick and experimental harpist Mary Lattimore. The first is on an early morning train ride across the country, cocooned in liminal space where you feel both exhausted and alive, wiping the dreary sleep from your eyes in anticipation of the destination to come. The second is during a languid stroll through the city at night, your mind cradled by the soft glow of streetlamps and the insulated warmth of the snow-blanketed streets. And finally, in the bath, if you’re the kind of person who bathes.
Like any good ambient music, the songs on Tragic Magic have a balming effect…
There’s a slight “Sympathy For the Devil” tone to the opening seconds of “Pendulum Swing”, the first track on the US country adjacent stylist and former Grammy nominee Courtney Marie Andrews’ ninth studio album – the descending piano figure, the circling percussion. As the song opens out, it develops into a dark-light exercise in contrasts, along the lines of the more muted moments of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
Ambiance set, the ensuing nine tracks evince a similar restraint, where a low-key vibe is punctuated by flashes of gospel-esque drama. A lot of Valentine, Andrews’ first album on her own Loose Future label, is recognisably rooted in country. “Cons & Clowns” has a Dolly Parton vibe. “Only the Best” is similarly slanted.
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…
Like with any other rock genre (or sub-genre), the death of psychedelic rock has been proclaimed so many times that the proclamation itself became redundant. The reasons may seem quite simple – the appeal of psych rock remains to this day, whether in its original or ever-coming changes in shape or form, with the original core (and ideas) remaining intact in one or more elements that define psych rock as such.
With Under Dark Skies, their latest album, Los Angeles outfit Tombstones in Their Eyes just prove the point. With the band going through intense personal changes (including the passing of guitarist Paul Boutin this October), the band still firmly remains in the songwriting hands of John Trainor, one of its original founders,…
Peter Evans, a tremendously inventive trumpeter and post-modern composer, reunites his Being & Becoming group — formed in 2017 — for its third album, Ars Ludicra. Drawing on vast musical experience and formidable technique, the endlessly curious Evans blends styles and moods, shaping the pitch and contour of his phrases for maximum impact across four original compositions and one cover.
Armed with a progressive mindset and supported by Mike Pride’s tasteful post-production, the quartet opens with “Malibu”, where Evans’ fearless, scorching lines and Joel Ross’ lucid vibraphone ideas unfold over the tireless, tumbling rhythmic engine built by bassist Nick Jozwiak and drummer Michael Shekwoaga Ode.
…author of the immersive Manu Chao biography, Clandestino, roving world music journalist, composer and “nomad pianist” Peter Culshaw released his previous set, Music from the Temple of Light, in 2023.
Surrender to Love is spun from the same threads that were woven through that Temple of Light – mixing an ambient piano as a grounding for the music, with a range of Eastern and Middle Eastern instruments and voices, and a ruling spirit and approach that’s drawn from the Sufi wing of spirituality – a music and practice associated with Islam, but one that perhaps predates it, stretching away into older, even prehistoric means of devotion and surrender.
The authority in these Sufi-inflected pieces is…
In even the most straightforward Tanner Matt production, there’s a moment where everything threatens to disintegrate. Since he began putting out leftfield house music in the early 2010s — working under aliases like Hashman Deejay, Studio Mody, and Ttam Renat, and in the groups Aquarian Foundation, Kinetic Electronix, and INTe*ra, among others — the Vancouver electronic musician has specialized in stripped-down tracks with shaky foundations and a sneaky dub underpinning. He’s fond of twisting the delay knob until the groove wobbles at the knees, or tweaking the syncopation until the downbeat disappears. A recent series of 12″ EPs with the similarly elusive producer C3D-E has taken his trickster tendencies to the extreme, stretching blunted,…
…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…
After nine albums with indie rock trio Peter Bjorn and John, Peter Morén began to confront the issue of who he really was as a songwriter. Given plenty of time to think during the pandemic, he emerged as SunYears with a debut album, Come Fetch My Soul in 2023. It had elements of guitar pop, indie rock, and folk, a mixture he’s evolved on his second album, The Song Forlorn. Morén credits The Beatles’ Revolver and The White Album as influences that leaned on a variety of styles. There certainly is something for everyone here.
Things kick off with ‘Where Are We’, a grumbling garage rock instrumental leading into the folk rock of ‘Dark Eyes’, inspired by a friend in the throes of depression. A theme continued by the piano ballad ‘Your Dad Was Sad’, written…
Listening to Excess of Loss, the new album from Xol Meissner, one can’t help but be transported to a different time and place, where the haunting baritone vocals recall Scott Walker, Nick Cave, and Jacques Brel, and the instrumental accompaniment consists of a hammered lap steel. The combination invokes a dream-like state that is dark and mysterious but oddly intoxicating. Excess of Loss draws inspiration from many places, but still sounds like absolutely nothing else.
Xol Meissner is the alias of New York City-based composer Mauro Hertig. Classically trained and the 2019 Laureate of the Voix-Nouvelles Académie in France, Hertig had regularly used text in scored works prior to writing songs full-time. His unique style of lap steel was previously…
On Bloodline, singer-songwriter Mon Rovîa approaches his complex upbringing with an impressive clarity of vision. Born in Liberia during the West African nation’s civil war, Janjay Lowe was adopted by a white American family that moved around the U.S.; eventually, Lowe would come to call Tennessee home.
As a teen, he picked up his brothers’ taste for Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, but seeing few Black artists working in that genre, Lowe started making R&B. As he found a TikTok following, he gradually re-introduced those indie-folk influences, embracing the ukulele he’d played as a kid and coming to recognize his place in a long lineage of Afro-Appalachian music. Bloodline, his full-length debut, follows a series of EPs and…
Ten years ago, La Tène released their first record, then as a trio with Cyril Bondi, d’Incise, and Alexis Degrenier. A decade, four albums, and multiple collaborations later, the group returns with Moreïne/Déclives — an album that feels as much like a celebration as it does an upheaval. True to its identity, La Tène continues to explore the cracks between tradition and experimentation, between hypnotic drone and repeated gestures, but this time they choose to move onto new ground: the hurdy-gurdy, the group’s emblematic instrument since the very beginning, disappears in favor of a stripped-down setup centered on two electronic percussions and live dub work.
It proves very difficult to tell what is electronic and what isn’t on La Tène’s cavernous and…
Forty years ago, The Twinsets were the ultimate “you had to be there” band, a vibrant, ethereal presence in the history of Scottish independent music. They commanded massive fees for an unsigned act on the university circuit and delivered high-octane sets at the Edinburgh Nite Club, yet they vanished into the mid-80s ether without ever releasing a formal record. Only with the archival devotion of Precious Recordings of London, that silence has finally been broken. This release of the 1982–1983 sessions is more than just a compilation; it is a vital act of musical restitution and a long-overdue correction to the indie-pop canon. The mastering preserves the tension between the girl group sweetness of yesteryear with the grit of punk, ensuring the tracks…
Manslaughter 777 are powerhouses of forward-thinking rhythmic music and production. The duo, composed of drummers/programmers Lee Buford (The Body, Sightless Pit, Dead Times, Everyone Asked About You) and Zac Jones (MSC, Nothing, Braveyoung), combine their prowess as percussionists and producers into beat-centric music that delights in turning unexpected sounds into razor sharp rhythms. Buford and Jones, along with engineer/producer Seth Manchester of Machines with Magnets (The Body, Model/Actriz, Liturgy), have collaborated for nearly two decades, consistently shattering genre boundaries and redefining the role of the studio in the process. God’s World uses innovative sound sampling to create expansive sonics driven…