Chicago’s Mike ‘Musikanto’ is creating something of a ripple. Music writers are drawing similarities between his intimate, delicate, songs and the work of such greats as Ryan Adams, Van Morrison and the deity that is Bob Dylan. Well, in the…
Category: Reviews
Album | Widowspeak – Widowspeak
Widowspeak may have a death-laden name, but the opening track on their eponymous debut, ‘Puritan’, is one of the sunniest songs on the album, with a surfing edge and casually sweet vocals, so that the grungy guitar of ‘Harsh Realm’…
Album | Jonathan Wilson – Gentle Spirit
Jonathan Wilson is clearly someone who appreciates that there’s a lot wrong with the world today. Gentle Spirit is, in his own words, an attempt to “give humanity some kind of reverence-laden soundtrack”. The North Carolinian shouldn’t be derided for…
EP | Grace Petrie – When No One’s Listening
Grace Petrie first came to my attention when she stole the stage at Glastonbury’s Left Field in 2010 from Frank Turner and Billy Bragg. She is clearly a big fan of Bragg and follows his habit of mixing pop and…
Album | The Wood Brothers – Smoke Ring Halo
It’s best to start at the end when considering the Wood Brothers’ Smoke Ring Halo, as its final track is breathtaking. ‘Blue and Green’ is crisp, clean, and frankly as close to perfect as I have heard in recent history.…
EP | Paul Thomas Saunders – Lilac and Wisteria
I remember seeing Paul Thomas Saunders a couple of years ago in his native Leeds. He was doing the whole emotive-bloke-with-a-guitar routine and, truth be told, he was doing it pretty well. It was with that expectation that I set…
Album | Dennis Hopper Choppers – Be Ready
What an inspired place Tabernas, southern Spain was for writing such a broodingly atmospheric album. Ben Nicholls headed for the land where Sergio Leone shot ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ to pen the songs that would become Be…
Album | Dead Trees – Whatwave
Languid garage rock is the American subgenre that refuses to die. It has endured, barely evolving, since being invented back in the 60s by the Velvet Underground, or maybe the Seeds. Its popularity waxes and wanes, sometimes breaking into the…
Album | William Elliott Whitmore – Field Songs
‘Rootsy’ is a term that gets used a lot in describing that certain kind of Americana that draws heavily on rural country blues, evoking cotton fields and dustbowls. But if it’s actually possible to hear earth, soil, you can hear…
Album | Josienne Clarke – One Light Is Gone
Everything about Josienne Clarke’s music, whether live or recorded, is proper folk. Her debut album One Light Is Gone resolutely champions an authentic acoustic sound and instantly gained heavy rotation on this listener’s daily commute. Josienne’s songs are traditional and…