With women coming on strong in popular country music last year via strong feminist empowerment anthems from the Highwomen collaborative made up of Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Natalie Hamby, and Maren Morris, and Carlile’s collaborative production giving Tanya Tucker a career reboot, you had to know that we were due to hear from one of…
As influential as UK post/punk rock band The Psychedelic Furs has been in modern music circles, it’s pretty surprising to look back at their discography and realize that the entirety of their studio recordings can be found on seven albums released over eleven years, between 1980 and 1991. The band’s string of hits – “Sister…
After the death of long-time Gang of Four leader and lead guitarist, Andy Gill, in February, the band released the posthumous EP This Heaven Gives Me Migraine. It included a few spoken words from Gibb, a new track that had been slated for their follow up to last year’s full-length Happy Now, another version of…
All Together Now is the Geelong-based quintet Beans (formally Baked Beans) follow up to their 2018 debut record Babble. The group has taken their already organ-driven psych-rock and perfected the formula as All Together Now is bigger, more addictive and dives deeper into the nostalgia of classic rock. Beans succeed because they absolutely play and…
It’s almost hard to say what’s more surprising here, that Taylor Swift dropped a surprise new album last Thursday that was entirely recorded in the months of this coronavirus pandemic quarantine, or that you’re reading about it here, where I primarily focus on independent rockers. However, when the 30 year old pop star turns to…
Like many of the innovative, influential women artists who carved out a name for themselves in the early days of modern rock & roll music – Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Jett – Chrissie Hynde is practically a force of nature unto herself. As she sang…
Somehow, even when Rufus Wainwright was getting a lot of buzz for the sophisticated sound on his self-titled debut (’98) and his sophomore outing, Poses, he felt like an old soul, someone who’s idea of pop music came from Cole Porter’s prestigious catalog in the 1930’s, and prone to quoting lines from the plays of…
The debut of NZ band The Beths, Future Me Hates Me, was one of the musical bright spots of 2018, making it onto a lot of music critics’ ‘best of’ lists. We hear a continuation of the band’s bright power pop, and the smart songwriting by lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes, along with the supportive vocal…
Phoebe Bridgers’ solo sophomore album arrives amid a growing demand for the young indie rock singer/songwriter. After the release of her debut, Stranger in the Alps in 2017, Bridgers formed the group Boygenius with Julian Baker and Lucy Dacus, releasing and EP in ’18 and then touring. In early ’19, the duo of Bridgers and…
Avoiding the sophomore album slump is a monumental task for any group that had a successful debut, like Melbourne-based band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. Hope Downs (2018) had the college jangle at times like R.E.M., which then combined with the raw rock of The Replacements. This guitar indie rock was a breathe of fresh air…
