Unlike many acts who bill themselves as a cross between pop, folk, rock, and soul, Julia King has synthesized these genres into something cohesive and trained. Moreover, it’s undeniably her, representing a ‘Julia’ state of mind more than anything. Each…
If ever you were going to look for the most unlikely array of instruments the combination of mandolin, bouzouki, and guitar would finish high on the list. Yet using these instruments along with a tenor banjo, The Trials of Cato…
It’s hard to believe that the Fleet Foxes could have been The Pineapples. But that name had been taken by another band so Robin Pecknold decided on Fleet Foxes, thinking it was “evocative of some weird activity like fox hunting.”…
Our culture talks about a boy genius, but girls (or women) don’t seem to get the same treatment. Women in music get treated differently simply because they are female. As Lucy Dacus notes, “I think it’s great that people are…
There is a specific kind of music that seems to be engineered to be a gift to the listener, but in a totally disinterested way. The whole career of Damian Kathkuda might be viewed in this light, to be honest.…
Never before has a title been quite as apropos as ‘Heavy Like a Brick’. The opening number from off of Jupiter in Velvet’s seventh album, Beautiful New Day, spends little time building into a crescendo. Instead, it’s hefty rock, straightaway, though…
Late last month, Oxford sibling duo Catgod released a new single in the form of ‘Sleep In’. Inundated by the turbulence of uncertainty in a relationship, the tune undulates within the broad soundscape it outwardly paints, ferried forward with a…
Frank Migliorelli and The Dirt Nappers are going strong with a third album coming just around the bend. The Things You Left Behind is projected for a February release and is set to give listeners more of the soulful blend of…
Hailing from the Bailiwick of Jersey in the Channel Islands, Frankie Davies seems an unlikely candidate for country music dreams. Still, she grew up listening to country music and the hold it had on her never let go. Over the…
Seth Lakeman has a lot to live up to. It’s not every violin player who gets a call from Robert Plant as he’s driving his daughter to school and thinks it’s a prank. Despite his initial disbelief he became a…