Kelly Hunt plays banjo in a way most other people don’t. Her calfskin tenor banjo is unique, different than anything made today. “I opened up the case and it said ‘This banjo was played by a man named Ira Tamm in his dog and…
Expectations for Siobhan Wilson’s new album The Departure were raised considerably based on the success of There Are No Saints. As a nominee for Scotland’s Album of the year it would not have been surprising to feel a bit of…
Lush, orchestral, and complex, the world of Lydia Ainsworth’s Phantom Forest is virtually all her. This world she inhabits having written most of the music and lyrics, played the vast majority of the instruments, and produced the album in its…
Joy Williams is finally back on the Front Porch. Her aptly title new record chronicles the comfort generated in returning both to her Nashville home and to the acoustic, folk-driven music she would play on her own front porch. Intimacy…
In ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ Bob Dylan sings, “But even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked” and on Undress the Felice Brothers have taken that notion to heart. Ian Felice makes it…
Ben Cooper is amazingly well adjusted. The force behind Radical Face grew up in south with nine siblings. Barely above the poverty line, his mixed-race family seemed normal, until he realised that not everyone was brought up the same way…
In League With Dragons is the seventeenth album in twenty-five years from the Mountain Goats. What’s surprising is that John Darnielle, songwriter and frontman for the band, decided to give up control and let one of his old collaborators, Owen…
Craig Finn is a master of the short story. In three and half minutes he can tell you more than most people tell you in a lifetime. On I Need A New War, Finn concludes a trilogy of music that…
Gentle graces. There is something essentially soft and tender about Carrie Tree’s latest record, The Canoe. Underneath the placid exterior are musical depths one doesn’t always associate with folk music, instruments like balafon, ronroco, ngoni, and jarana. Allow the music…
Daniel Norgren is an anomaly. If you close your eyes and listen to a song like ‘Let Love Run The Game’, you’d almost swear it was The Band, but with an unidentifiable vocalist. The music choogles along, sounding like something…