Listen Before You Buy

No need to beat around the bush with this one: “We Don’t Need” is an almightily good EP. It’s tempting to call Cheyenne Marie Mize promising because her career is so young, but that’s underselling it: this is a compelling record, equal parts fascinating experimentation and plain fun, and as exciting as Mize’s future will no doubt be, she deserves your attention right here, right now.

“Provincial” is an album firmly rooted in Manitoba, Canada, John K. Samson’s home. The album follows him and his observations about the countryside and nearby residents. Don’t let Samson’s past fool you: there’s very little punk here, but this album of stories is very much worth hearing.

“The Lion’s Roar” is a uniquely warm and well developed album that wears its recent folk and country influences on its sleeve and is no worse for it.

Released last summer, “The Harrow And The Harvest” proves that the old country blood of the deep south and pioneer spirit of the west still lurks somewhere in the veins of its descendants.

A 60′s psych-folk throwback whose layered, homely sound is unlike anything you’ve heard…recently.

Achieving musical alchemy, Morning Teleportation successfully combine more genres than I can count, creating fabulous journeys of song. They have taken the rulebook of song writing and thrown it out the window. They’re doing things their way.

Bill Callahan sounds more like the omniscient narrator of The Big Lebowski than a standard singer songwriter on his latest album, another soothing slice of American rock.

You should be prepared to get more than a little sad listening to this Dawes album, but it’s mighty pretty nonetheless.

Small town drama, wilderness woes and more fill Deep Dark Woods’ rockabilly record with enough imagery to satiate a hungry ear for a thousand years. These songs feel like stories told around the fire, or on a ship traveling far through foreign seas.

Carrousel’s tracks sit somewhere between whimsy and wistfulness, and are pitched perfectly to bring out the excellent vocals. The swooping verse melody of “14″ is especially good; one of the best I’ve heard in a while.

Since picking up his guitar for the first time at the age of 13, Nash has sung about God, loss, change, and nature versus man.

TweetShare Sardonic, quick-witted comic artist and folk-poet Jeffrey Lewis is a bit of a cult figure – when he’s not appearing in the The New York Times for the world to see, that is. It’s something he addresses head on with the song “Cult Boyfriend” from his latest album, “A Turn In The Dream-Songs“. Self-deprecating [...]

TweetShare Will Oldham, better known as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, has a pretty well solidified spot in amongst today’s very best folk artists. He’s in with damned enviable company in Oberst, Waits, and Callahan to name a few. With obvious ease, Oldham has consistently churned out expertly crafted, honest, brooding music for more than a decade. [...]

TweetShare What is it about a cold night and a solid breeze that makes a song like “Worried Blues” feel absolutely right. The song sounds great, and that’s not changing with the seasons, but why does fall cause a song with such hints of sadness to settle within and make us think “Yeah…I dig that” [...]

TweetShare As as far as job descriptions go, the singer-songwriter is about as specific as “an artist in New York”. Yet Annie Williams embodies all the good qualities of that name, the ones you had to work for at some point in time in order to wear the title among greats like Dylan and Joni. [...]

TweetShare Some bands are of the future, some are of the now and others are of the past. Madràs is most certainly a band of the now, but the catch is that they want to drag you into the past and remind you of the change and heartache that brought them to where they are [...]