by Ian Parker • • Comments Off on Premiere | Ordinary Elephant – Jenny & James
If you’re looking for one word to sum up the music of Ordinary Elephant, the title of their new album will do you. Honest. Honest in its tradition, honest in its sentiment, honest in its sound. ‘Jenny & James’ fits…
by Jonathan Frahm • • Comments Off on Single | Todd Warner Moore – ‘And We Sing’
Hong Kong-based singer-songwriter Todd Warner Moore is at it again with the release of a new full-length album just around the corner. Entitled Love & Change, Moore expands his sound with an Americana tinge to his primarily acoustically-driven gamut of…
by Pete Bate • • Comments Off on Album | Damien Jurado – In The Shape Of A Storm
It must be a big deal for songwriters – often solitary by nature – to land on a partner, or muse, who can push them to new peaks. Damien Jurado’s collaboration with Richard Swift began to bear fruit over a…
by Jonathan Frahm • • Comments Off on Single | Y. Dan Rubinstein – ‘Don’t Break What You Cannot Fix’
From the start, folk music has been harboring a rebellious spirit; it’s a key part in an artist’s unfettered ability to bear the truth. To that degree, Y. Dan Rubinstein is a genuine folkster, unmoved by outside denominators when taking…
by Jonathan Frahm • • Comments Off on Premiere | Adam Burrows – ‘A Hymn Instead of a Homily’
Since the days of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, modern folk music and organized religion have had a tenuous relationship at best. Yet, there’s also the twist and turns that the genre has shared with gospel hymns, present in every…
by Bob Fish • • Comments Off on Album | Swimming Bell – Wild Sight
Lovely and strange is the perfect way to describe Wild Sight, the debut album from Swimming Bell. Enthralling vocals layered one upon another combine with simple instrumentation, treated to create otherworldly blends unlike virtually anything else. Katie Schottland, who records…
by Bob Fish • • Comments Off on Album | Ratso – Stubborn Heart
Larry ‘Ratso’ Sloman has the kind of curriculum vitae that most writers would kill for. Scribe for Rolling Stone, author of On The Road With Bob Dylan, co-writer of memoirs for Howard Stern, Anthony Kleidis, and Mike Tyson, lyricist for…
by Jonathan Frahm • • Comments Off on Album | All This Huxley – Home, Stockholm
From the opening moments of the titular ‘Stockholm’s’ jawan brood, it’s easy to establish that All This Huxley present a form of raw indie presence perhaps last seen in as unvarnished a form when Wilco first hit the scene 25…
by Jonathan Frahm • • Comments Off on Video Premiere | J.W. Teller & Drew Danburry – ‘Ghost’
With his self-titled debut album, J.W. Teller rung in the year right for folk listeners like us. Each song present on the LP serves the same function of illustrating a separate part in Teller’s life, the singer-songwriter recalling these moments…
by Jonathan Frahm • • Comments Off on Video | Damon Mitchell – ‘Elise’
Having recently joined America on-stage for an encore rendition of their hit song, ‘A Horse With No Name’, Damon Mitchell’s latest single doesn’t feel too out-of-sync with 60s and 70s-era folk-rock, either. Procuring elements of what made the likes of…