At times Beirut can seem a little esoteric. Zach Condon dropped out of high school at 17 and worked at a movie theater specialising in international films. There he learned about Fellini arias, Sicilian funeral brass and Balkan music. After…
Rhiannon Giddens has a passion for the banjo. Not so much the banjo heard on bluegrass recordings, but the old-time claw hammer style. Together with Justin Robinson on fiddle, they explored the roots of African American music with the Carolina…
Florist seem determined to go gently into existential chaos on their new album, Jellywish. Attacking personal problems like joy, pain, life, death, reality and relationships, Emily Sprague and her bandmates, Rick Spataro, Jonnie Baker and Felix Walworth, struggle with some…
Jeffrey Lewis is not your average recording artist. Over a span of almost 20 years he’s created a 13-issue comic book series, Fuff; his illustrations have been viewed in The New York Times, Time Out New York and The Guardian.…
Defining Neil Young is a fool’s task. Whatever Young you choose to describe only hints at the mercurial musician who has recorded everything from the gentlest of acoustic music to the almost unlistenable sounds residing on ARC. The 10 recordings…
Polly Paulusma’s new album, Wildfires, goes against the grain. In an age of limited attention spans and content digested in quick doses, she has released a sprawling collection; 19 songs, each with a prologue that runs anywhere from 45-seconds to…
The gestation period for Patterson Hood’s Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams runs about 40 years. Which means events from his past have rung and stung him in different ways than they would have if some of the events described in…
Tracking all the changes Nadia Reid has gone through since her last album, Out of My Province came out in 2020, it becomes obvious we are dealing with a very different woman, one who has had a series of changes.…
Bonnie “Prince” Billy marches to his own beat. As a musician he’s recorded with everyone from Johnny Cash to Bitchin Bajas, he’s acted in John Sayle’s movie Matewan and appeared with Zach Galifianakis in a Kayne West video. He does…
Tunng albums transcend time. They don’t fit in a pattern of what’s popular at any particular moment. They use elements that seem to be ridiculously out of place, forming an off kilter whole residing in a world of its own.…