The Decemberists are one of the most literate bands on the planet. Not that should be a shock since Colin Meloy is also a published author with a series of young adult books to his credit, not to mention a…
Richard Thompson makes music unlike anybody else in the recording industry, and he’s been doing it since the late 1960s. Jamming with Hendrix, covered by a who’s who of the recording industry, received an OBE from Queen Elizabeth. What’s left…
Bill MacKay finds ways to challenge all your notions of what a guitarist is supposed to be on Locust Land. Using more keyboards than guitars, ‘Phantasmic Fairy’, the opening track, suggests he’s doing what he wants rather than using some…
The Avett Brothers may not think so, but they are no ordinary band, and their new, self-titled album proves that point in spades. They have a way of making music that incorporates virtually everything while remaining tinged with folk and…
Humboldt County, California is where Six Organs of Admittance began some 26 years ago, and since 2019 it is again where Ben Chasny resides and where Time is Glass came to fruition. Pure Chasny, no one else was involved in…
Magic is a funny thing. When it occurs there’s no stopping it, and Oisin Leech’s Cold Sea is a product of magic. The stars aligned. There’s really no other way to explain it. A pause in the world forced Lost…
In the four years since Itasca’s Spring the world has changed completely, so there may be no antecedents for Imitation of War. It is an electric album, but one with a delicacy unlike anything else heard this year. It exists out of time…
The gestation period of a goose is 28 days. Mol Sullivan’s first album, Goose, needed to gestate a bit longer. Quite a bit longer, 15 years to be exact. She had to deal with a decade-long affair, not with a…
All The Bee sneak up on you. While the music is quiet and seems unassuming, the effect it has takes hold and won’t let go. Kirsty McGee and Gitika Partington sing and play in ways that are outside of the…
In the muddled pathways of the pandemic, the Smoke Fairies looked less at the glass ball, reaching instead for reflecting on lives, loves and losses that formed Carried in Sound. What’s most striking is the way, with the aid of…