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 t…
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 wh…
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 r…
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. I…
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…
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 c…
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 t…