How do you ever follow up a record that is as highly revered in the indie rock world as The Wrens’ Meadowlands? The album was released in 2003 and then the band faded away for 18 years with sporadic news of fresh material every year, new album talk constantly being whispered and dreamed about, and…
Just as Sufjan Stevens turned to video game culture to inspire the music of his triumphant 2020 release, The Ascension, often echoing the genre’s use of electronic sounds and fast beats, here in collaboration with Angelo de Augustine, they turn to a variety of movies as a jumping off point for A Beginner’s Mind. But…
Over the course of her nearly 40 year career, Aimee Mann has pretty much done it all. In the 80’s she led the new wave band ‘Til Tuesday, composing their biggest hit, “Voices Carry,” and even sang a rare duet with Rush’s Geddy Lee. When she went solo, Mann signed to an indie label start…
In many ways, Damon Albarn’s official second solo album is as influenced by his physical surroundings in Iceland, as his early breakthrough albums with the band Blur – Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, and The Great Escape – offered a window into the British youth culture of ‘90’s. The singer/songwriter became an official citizen of…
Psychedelic vintage soul champion Curtis Harding set the bar high with his first two albums, 2014’s Soul Power and 2017’s Face Your Fear. The records highlighted a stylistic vision that put him in the upper echelon in the modern soul movement and now on his third long player, If Words Were Flowers, Harding sounds like…
If there are actually five stages of grief, Nashville singer/songwriter Madi Diaz may have stumbled on a few more levels of pain on her ANTI- Records debut, History of a Feeling, where she explores her sense of loss at the ending of a significant relationship. Diaz left the Berklee College of Music to self-release her…
All of the songs Ada Lea wrote for her follow-up to her 2019 release, What We Say In Private, describe events that have a deep connection to points in the neighborhood where she grew up in her native Montreal. While the folk/pop singer/songwriter has a knack for describing the moments during a party that matter,…
On her solo debut album, Outside Child, Allison Russell finally gets around to telling her own story, in her own unique way. Previously in the Vancouver roots music group Po’ Girl, Russell migrated to the American midwest where she formed Birds of Chicago with her now husband JT Nero, mixing her roots, gospel and blues…
Anyone familiar with the work of Pokey LaFarge will tell you that his music is deeply rooted in the music of the past, think the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, before rock got to rolling, when pop on the radio mingled jazz, country and lots of American roots music with their melodic pop. While the timbre…
As The Wild Feathers entered their second decade as a band, they were more or less forced to pause and reflect on their early successes, like when their 2013 Jay Joyce produced debut rose to number one on the Billboard magazine’s Heatseeker’s chart of up-and-coming acts, and the band’s 2016 live sold-out concert release, Live…
