I’m pretty sure that years in the music world work like dog years. You disappear for twelve months and everything seems to have changed. It’s a given then that five years is an eternity. Rewind back to 2015 and Fetty…
Album Review: Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi – “There is No Other”
Rhiannon Giddens is a folk singer in the truest sense of the world: she spins yarns to music about ordinary American folk, tracing a lineage of suffering for her people that stretches right back to when they were slaves forcibly…
Album Review: The Mountain Goats – “In League With Dragons”
In League With Dragons is no more a concept album about Dungeons & Dragons than Sgt. Pepper is a concept album about its titular band: in both instances most of the actual songs on the record don’t relate to the central “concept”.…
Album Review: Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear – “The Radio Winners”
On 2015’s Skeleton Crew, the unvarnished nature of mother and son earnestly performing anthemic Americana carried Madisen Ward and “Mama Bear” Ruth forward in a whirlwind of press. It was sort-of an unusual case, and that made it captivating to…
Album Review: Frank Turner – “Be More Kind”
The world is a big, beautiful place full of endless possibility. With how interconnected it has become through the annals of time and historic decisions made by our ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years, though, sometimes it can feel…
Album Review: Joan Baez – “Whistle Down the Wind”
With a guitar in one hand with another in a raised fist, Joan Baez came whirring into the early 1960s folk scene like a wildfire. For nearly 60 years after, she’s become known for whisking her crystalline voice into action,…
From the Record Crate: Suzanne Vega – “Solitude Standing” (1987)
Many artists past and present need a few album releases before they officially find their own style of music. Some may find what makes them unique right away. Suzanne Vega fits into the latter of the two groups. Her folk-style…