For the last 20 years, the duo that make up The Black Keys have been refining their own take on the blues and R&B influences that are the underpinning of early rock icons like Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton’s Cream. Guitarist and vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney were so enamored with potent musical…
Melbourne’s Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever is a band that has the appearance of following an older music model. I believe with their third long player, Endless Rooms, that model continues to pay large dividends. Artist development is pretty much a thing of the past these days but even with the success of their 2018 debut,…
(watch my moves), the ninth studio album from Kurt Vile if you include his collaboration with Courtney Barnett on 2017’s Lotta Sea Lice, finds the folk/rock singer-songwriter guitarist in now familiar territory. A traditionally laid-back creator of jangly guitar rock, Vile used some of the pandemic shutdown to build a home studio, OKV Central, which…
Even if you haven’t loved every step on the journey with Weezer, you have to be impressed by composer/bandleader Rivers Cuomo’s work ethic and high-quality output. Frankly, I was less than enamoured with the mega-buzz that accompanied the band’s cover of “Africa” by Toto than say, the original the first time around. But not only…
When Calexico’s primary members and writing team, Joey Burns and John Convertino convened at the home studio of their keyboard player Sergio Mendoza last summer it may have seemed unlikely that the rock press would be discussing an 18 year-old album track off their Feast of Wire album by the end of 2021. Turns out…
At this point in Father John Misty’s career I feel like his unpredictability is part of his musical mystery. I also feel like it is a given that his output will be witty, complex and challenging. Chloë And The Next 20th Century, his fifth album and first new material since the release of God’s Favorite…
Midlake, a band a UK reviewer described succinctly as “the Texan masters of folk-proggy-Americana”, return nine years after their last album, Antiphon, recorded six months after the departure of their previous frontman and singer/songwriter, Tim Smith. And if early listens of For the Sake of Bethel Woods feel mysteriously haunted, it’s worth noting that the…
While Life On Earth is Hurray for the Riff Raff’s debut on the Nonesuch label, it’s the 7th studio album from singer/songwriter Alynda Segarra, who currently dwells in New Orleans and also fronted the “hobo band” Dead Man Street Orchestra. Segarra’s last album, 2017’s The Navigator gave Segarra a chance to explore their Puerto Rican…
We all know “Things Are Great” is what you say, when you don’t want to tell people that you’re really going through a challenging time. It’s the more grandiose version of “I’m fine.” And like many of the songs here by Ben Bridwell and his Band of Horses, the overall effect is uplifting and liberating,…
Although Joan Osborne has kept recording solo albums, touring, and collaborating with the likes of the Funk Brothers, Phil Lesh and other members of The Dead, she’s no doubt best remembered for her biggest hit, the quirky folk pop of “One of Us” from her debut album, Relish in 1995. And while I’m a fan…
