With the recent passing of the “Screaming Eagle of Soul,” Charles Bradley in September, Sonny Knight in June and Sharon Jones last year, the retro soul movement has taken a serious blow. Their talents are irreplaceable but with Curtis Harding’s new record, Face Your Fear, you will quickly realize that the genre will continue to…
As a critic, I learned long ago to lower my expectations. When you expect greatness, that is when you get burnt. The same goes about expecting a poop emoji. If you go into a record thinking it is going to suck…most likely it will. That is why music is subjective. I say all of that…
A wintry wonderland hides dark secrets in the atmospheric thriller The Snowman, which has undertones of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In the frigid landscape, a sociopath who calls himself “The Snowman Killer” has targeted the one person he wants to appreciate his methodical, unthinkable “skills”. That person is Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender), lead investigator…
Brisbane chamber-folk singer-songwriter Monique Clare is heading out on an east coast tour to support her brand new crowd funded EP By The Stars The tour will see Monique Clare perform around Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT including an appearance at Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival at the end of October. Check out…
You must reach a point, one would guess, where you’ve had as much success as you need or that you expect to get, and you can stop striving for some elusive brass ring, and settle in with your friends for the sake of making music with your friends. That certainly seems to be the case…
In the mid to late 70s, Neil Young had a particularly productive period in his songwriting, it was shortly after the release of the grief-ridden Tonight’s the Night, and Zuma, which featured “Cortez, the Killer,” and his too brief exploration with Stephen Stills that produced one album, Long May You Run. David Briggs, often Young’s…
Sandgrown is the debut solo album from Ultimate Painting’s Jack Cooper. He also was in the band Mazes. Cooper has a super smooth voice that is in the same tone of Dean Wareham (Luna) or Stuart Lee Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian). His delivery is similar to his band Ultimate Painting, without his band mate James…
Kamasi Washington’s new EP Harmony of Difference is set to be released on 29 September 2017 via Young Turks / Remote Control Records. This is the first new music from Washington since his acclaimed 2015 debut album The Epic. Harmony of Difference originally premiered as part of the Whitney Museum of American Art 2017 Biennial. It appeared alongside…
Australian singer/songwriter Leah Senior’s second album finds the artist travelling the quiet path of the folk song troubadours of years past. Pretty Faces is recorded, for the most part, in the minimalist folk-singer tradition of Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and the early work of Joni Mitchell. Senior’s gentle voice floats over finger-picked or lightly strummed…
What’s in a name? For Jon Dwyer, it doesn’t seem to matter much as his OCS/The Oh Sees/Thee Oh Sees/Oh Sees project continues to morph its 20 year psychedelic garage rock arc and it just keeps getting more interesting. Orc is Oh Sees 19th record and feels as fresh and new as anything the band…
