Sometimes things hit you immediately, and sometimes they just smack across the face when you least expect it. The Gus by Mark Mulcahy is a case in point. I listened to it for the better part of a day and…
Album | Mark Mulcahy – The Gus
Author: Bob Fish
Album | Firefly Burning – Breathe Shallow
Take a deep breath, because Breathe Shallow by Firefly Burning is likely to take your breath away again and again. The staccato strings opening ‘It Won’t Be Long’ immediately inform listeners this record defies expectations. Attempts at categorisation are ultimately…
Album | Cate Le Bon – Reward
According to Cate Le Bon a reward can be quite sinister, especially in these Trumpian times. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word, and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it…
Album | Kelly Hunt – Even The Sparrow
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…
Album | Siobhan Wilson – The Departure
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…
Album | Lydia Ainsworth – Phantom Forest
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…
Album | Joy Williams – Front Porch
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…
Album | The Felice Brothers – Undress
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…
Interview | Radical Face finds his therapy
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…
Album | The Mountain Goats – In League With Dragons
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…