The world tends to play tricks on you when you least expect it. Though the Felice Brothers have been recording for almost two decades, singing songs of faith and despair, hope and heartbreak, dealing with every aspect of the human…
Lankum are unruly. While they play traditional Irish music, they don’t play it traditionally. At times this folk group seems closer to playing Irish heavy metal. They assault the senses one minute, then hit another button and come out with…
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…
Arriving four years after her debut album Hemet introduced the world to Niamh Regan’s powerful brand of quiet and powerful introspection, we receive the follow up Come As You Are. Whereas the former was recorded in studios between Galway and California, the latter…
2020 was a year of confusion, heartbreak, and resilience. It was tough, but it was also a time when creativity flourished in new ways. Thus it was with Oregon based songwriter Anna Tivel, who remarks, “I wrote feverishly in the…
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…
Relationships are complex. We all know that, since we live our lives surrounded by them. And when they don’t go to plan, many of us find ourselves engaging in intense self-reflection and internal conversations about what went wrong, how we…
Hot on the heels of last year’s Onliness, which saw Josienne Clarke recording, reworking and reclaiming a collection of her older songs, comes Parenthesis, I. Thirteen songs about finding who you are through the prism of where you came from and where…