Category: Reviews

Album | Jake Xerxes Fussell – When I’m Called

Jake Xerxes Fussell seems like music’s answer to Dos Equis’ “the world’s most interesting man.” He hosts a radio show on North Carolina’s WHUP-FM in Hillsborough with Jefferson Currie II every Wednesday afternoon. Covering music from Bob Dylan and June…

Album | Johnny Cash – Songwriter

Songwriter is the latest posthumously released album showcasing the talent of the great Johnny Cash – and this one is perhaps his most personal yet. Co-produced by his son John Carter Cash and longtime sound engineer for ‘The Man in…

Album | The Felice Brothers – Valley of Abandoned Songs

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…

Album | Lankum – Live In Dublin

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…

Album | Niamh Regan – Come As You Are

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…

Album | Anna Tivel – Living Thing

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…

Album | Richard Thompson – Ship to Shore

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…

Album | Bill MacKay – Locust Land

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…

Album | The Avett Brothers – The Avett Brothers

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…