Set up by last year’s solo album by Adrianne Lenker, from where U.F.O.F. takes a couple of tracks, the new Big Thief album is “state-of-the-art” contemporary Americana. The spare experience of abysskiss, a fully accomplished record, is transferred to the…
Some things just can’t be rushed. Oliver Cherer – the prolific artist behind Gilroy Mere, Dollboy, The Assistant, Australian Testing Labs and more – began writing these songs on a Yamaha 4 cassette recorder back in 1983. Influenced by early…
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…
Patrick Ames’ origin story as an artist begins in nondescript fashion. Having piqued an interest in songwriting as a teenager in the late 1960s, he was further influenced by the records owned by his older siblings. Come the time that…
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…
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…
J.J. Cale should hopefully need no introduction to For Folk’s Sake readers. The legendary Oklahoman musician and songwriter, who died almost 6 years ago, has had songs covered by many artists including Johnny Cash, Beck and, most famously, Eric Clapton.…
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…