Steep Canyon Rangers arrive at a moment of renewal and reaffirmation with Next Act, their 15th studio album. The record represents a conscious tightening of focus: a return to the bluegrass foundations that first bound the band together, approached with the confidence and emotional range earned through years of collective evolution. It is an affirmation that bluegrass still contains endless expressive possibility. Next Act finds the Rangers sounding deeply at home in their own musical language, drawing strength from tradition while continuing to write new chapters within it.
Formed in North Carolina and shaped equally by the Appalachian Mountains and the Piedmont, Steep Canyon Rangers have long occupied a singular space in American roots music.
Tag Archive: Yep Roc
Jobi Riccio knows that while a quiet heart-to-heart can solve many problems, sometimes the heart needs a giant, all-caps billboard, especially when the world around that massive sign gets louder by the day. As each new track on her new album Face the Feeling (Yep Roc Records) unveils, Riccio faces another inescapable emotion as if it were a billboard screaming into view as she hurtles down the highway. And rather than turn away from their challenge, Riccio faces those uncomfortable moments with the thrill of self-discovery, reveling in growth and change as facts of life.
Throughout Face the Feeling, Riccio finds masterful balance between extremes, indulging in the light and the dark, the subtle and the direct, the ecstatic highs and the mournful lows.
Some bands respond better to spontaneity than others, and more than four decades after their first album, the Young Fresh Fellows have been learning a lot about making things up as they go. The genesis of 2020’s Toxic Youth came when their longtime production ally Conrad Uno announced he was closing his studio in Seattle, and the YFF booked the room’s last three days and came up with 17 songs, mostly invented on the spot. 2026’s Loft pushes this concept even further; during a rare 2024 tour of the Midwest and East Coast, the YFF were invited to spend a day at the Loft, Wilco’s studio and rehearsal space in Chicago, and they took full advantage of the opportunity. Though they had only a few fragments of songs ready for the occasion, they cut enough…
A companion piece to the album, Right Now!, this collection contains additional recordings from those sessions, as well as Tchad Blake remixes and reworkings of songs from Right Now! All recordings, except for “Reap What You Sow,” have never been released. The psychedelic supergroup featuring Dave Alvin, Victor Krummenacher, David Immerglück, Michael Jerome, and Jesse Sykes continues to defy expectations and genre.
The album opens with an instrumental reinterpretation of Spellbinder inspired by Hungarian jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo, whose work has long influenced guitarist David Immerglück. “I’ve been a huge fan of Gabor Szabo my whole life,” Immerglück says. “When the idea came up to record Spellbinder, it felt like a no-brainer.”
Most all within the sphere of my reach has a reverence for classic soul music. Not upper-cased to designate any genre distinction, but closer to the ground… the small “s” signifying what truly changes and crosses the course of our blood. We’ve sought solace and direction as if a spinning disc were a communion rail before which we surrender; as if at the bent knee of our parents. It’s a ritual that has remained fortifying and alive – because the music itself has: refusing challenges to its legacy and relevance by evolving as we do.
Otis Redding, being but one sharp example, continues to sound like a living human being leaping from a pair of speakers because, in a very real way, he is one: his voice still reaching out with what poet William Carlos Williams…
Cordovas are an Americana rock band out of Nashville whose sound, equal parts soulful harmony, poetic craft, and cosmic improvisation, has long earned comparisons to The Band, Grateful Dead, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. But with their fifth studio album, Back to Life, the group sharpens the edges of its identity: road-tested, deeply traditional in the ways that matter, and determined to be respected on its own terms.
The band’s heartbeat lies between two places. In Todos Santos, Mexico, where Cordovas have lived, written, and built a small community of artists, the songs take shape in their most relaxed state, often amongst a circle of friends. Then it’s back to Nashville, where rehearsal, touring, and recording hammer those ideas into their…
Ruen Brothers strip their sound down to its twangy, haunted core on 2025’s Awooo. The duo’s fourth album and first since moving from their native England to their adopted home of Louisville, Kentucky, Awooo finds the brothers (singer, guitarist Henry Stansall and guitarist, multi-instrumentalist Rupert Stansall) pared down to their essentials. Consequently, the album shares little with its predecessor, 2023’s Ten Paces. Where that album found them blending their vintage ’50s- and ’60s-inspired rock with hooky pop elements, Awooo is all spare folk and country; a shadowy evocation of the long winter in which it was recorded. What connects all the duo’s work is a sharp self-awareness and wry, post-modern sense of humor. It’s an arch sensibility…
When attempting to provide an overview of a big story – one that encompasses both the myriad achievements of its subjects over a span of several decades and the impacts of those achievements – you can take two routes. There’s the “just the facts” approach, where you list off the people, places, and things that populate the tale, and then there’s another road that winds through the hows and whys behind the names and numbers. Looking at the story of Canadian indie rock institution Sloan, the temptation to look through both lenses is strong.
For those who prefer the factual take, there are certainly enough noteworthy events and experiences peppered through the band’s over 30-year history to make for a good yarn.
It’s a testament to Marshall Crenshaw’s songwriting and performance that even his castaways make for a compelling record. Recorded across two decades starting in 1990, From the Hellhole is a 14-track collection of remixed and remastered songs culled from a series of EPs and several rare deep cuts, that were mostly recorded in Crenshaw’s home studio (dubbed The Hellhole).
Among the tracks here is a solid cover of The Carpenters’ “(They Long To Be) Close to You.” With close to a dozen cover versions of this sappy pop classic out in the world, it should be pointed out that his version – originally released on an EP in 2013 – is arguably among the best thanks to his earnest delivery. Other covers songs here include a previously unreleased take…
Over the past two decades, Ontario-based Born Ruffians have been on a constant journey of musical evolution. From indie rock to New Wave to their current incarnation of synth pop, the band manages to show off snatches of just about every musical influence on Beauty’s Pride, their latest LP.
The opening track, “Mean Time” is heavy on synth and electronic elements like drum samples, but the lyric digs into some deep intellectual themes for inspiration: “Mean Time is sort of autobiographical/speculative non-fiction inspired by Nabokov’s beautiful autobiography Speak, Memory,” says, singer/guitarist Luke Lalonde’s. “It’s about those two black voids, the before and the after, and all of the extraordinary moments in between.”…
If you were to draw a Venn diagram regarding American bands tagged variously as No Depression, College Rock, Alt-Country, Paisley Underground and power pop, chances are that Scott McCaughey would be at the centre of the intersections. To quote a recent article, “Over the last four decades, McCaughey has been the Mad Hatter at an eternally rocking tea party where pals from Wilco, The Baseball Project, R.E.M., Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, The Decemberists, The Bangles, NRBQ, The Dream Syndicate, The Posies, and others help bring his slightly skewed visions to life.”
In his own right, McCaughey has helmed two fine bands, Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5, the latter quite a moveable feast of a band, the lineup fluctuating with various members…
Two-plus decades ago, not long after the release of 2002’s stellar Walking in a Straight Line, North Carolina’s The Mayflies USA, puzzlingly called it a day, despite growing buzz and their best reviews to date. Twenty years later, they realized they still had a little something left in the tank. And as if they’re trying to prove a point or simply justify their hiatus, they’ve managed to one-up their last release. Kickless Kids is a fantastic collection of power pop, crammed with memorable choruses, beautiful melodies, and infectious jangly guitars. You’d have to go back to R.E.M. to find a Southern band that can play power pop with such an effortless style.
Burned out on touring, the members all kept busy during their protracted time off, including…