“I like you, I like you,” intones Justin Vernon on ‘iMI’, the opening salvo of his group’s fourth album. In the three years since the shadowy 22, A Million, Bon Iver’s convener has achieved a hard-earned contentment – even if…
Album | Bon Iver – i,i
Category: Reviews
Single | CommonUnion59 – Borrowed Time
Lauren Malasig and Steve McKenzie are CommonUnion59. Hailing from San Francisco, the pianist and guitarist mesh their vocals to develop straight-shooting folk music. Redolent of the American folk movements of the 60s and 70s, their lyrical focus waxes philosophy on…
Live | Cambridge Folk Festival 2019
‘Good to see you again, folks!’ read the screens next to stage one on Thursday, the opening evening of 2019’s Cambridge Folk Festival; a not unfounded assumption that audiences return year after year. Thursday night has traditionally been a soft…
Album | Shannon Lay – August
In August of 2017 Shannon Lay’s life changed completely. She went from being a sometime musician to creating music full time when Kevin Morby asked her to open for him on an American tour. That life changing moment became the…
Album | Carriers – Now Is The Time For Loving Me, Yourself, & Everyone Else
The gestation period for birds is 35 days, while elephants take almost two years! In the case of Carriers, Curt Kiser’s Cincinnati-based band, the gestation period took five years. Yet along the way the band has become very well known,…
Album | Seeker Lover Keeper – Wild Seeds
“Let’s start a band.” With those words Seeker Lover Keeper was formed at a bar in Newtown, Australia nine years ago. Wild Seeds, their second album, finds Sarah Blasko, Sally Seltmann, and Holly Throsby reuniting for the first time in…
Album | Lillimure – Self-titled
On Lillimure’s self-titled debut LP, up-tempo jazz-hop splits meet conscious lyricism and sheer vocal finesse. It’s a fine blend of influences spanning a multitude of subgenres, culminating into the dense filling that fulfills a folk-pop shell. Shifting into a palpable…
Live | Pitchfork Music Festival, Union Park, Chicago
The heat index was topping out at 108 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) as Pitchfork began. Even hotter than the temperature was the performance of the Great Black Music Ensemble, a 13-piece band under the direction of AACM’s Ernest Dawkins.…
Album | Sharon Goldman – Every Trip Around the Sun
Varied in its themes as it is delivered like a warm embrace, Sharon Goldman’s songwriting is unvarnished folk-pop. Every Trip Around the Sun prides itself on humanity, and it seems to be that it does so with a “nothing more,…
Album | Eleni Mandell – Wake Up Again
A resident, and well-respected artist, in California, Eleni Mandell publishes what we can call her “prison album”. Even though not actually recorded in prison, the record is inspired by her participation in the “Jail With Guitars” program, bringing songwriting in…