Mark Shikuma

Directed by Julien Temple. Parallel Films/Sony Legacy. Joe Strummer was a son of a British diplomat, boarding school bully, bohemian, busker, scoundrel, field general, passionate soul, survivor, obsessive lyricist, cheerleader, wandering beatnik, father and punk warlord. Director Julien Temple excellently weaves the complex and often contradictory lines about the former frontman and mouthpiece for the […]

Album by Freedy Johnston Singing Magnet Records Singer/songwriter Freedy Johnston is a strange artist. His last studio record, Right Between the Promises, was released in 2001. Since then, he has released an album of unreleased material, The Way I Were: 4-Track Demos, 1986-1992 (2004), and a solo concert album, Live at McCabe’s Guitar Shop (2006). […]

Director/Producer: Steve Cantor Stick Figure Productions/Zeitgeist Films/HBO Documentary Films “It’s so strange to me that anyone would ever think that a work of art shouldn’t be disturbing or shouldn’t be invasive. It is to disturb, it is to make you think, it is to make you feel. If my work doesn’t disturb, from time to […]

By Frightened Rabbit. FatCat Records. With their sophomore effort, The Midnight Organ Fight, the band Frightened Rabbit delivers a deft assortment of songs, filled with dark, painful longings, performed with dramatic dynamics and immediacy. Recorded in two weeks with producer and engineer Peter Katis, who worked with Mercury Rev and Interpol, Frightened Rabbit have created […]

Album by Bon Iver. Jagjaguwar. It is the stuff of folklore how songwriter Justin Vernon (under the name of "Bon Iver") created and produced his sparkling solo debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. After spending several years in North Carolina with the band DeYarmond Edison, Vernon returned to his native home in Eau Claire, Wisc. He […]

Album by Vetiver Gnomonsong When The Band released Music From the Big Pink in 1968, the record was a revelation, a watershed, especially among fellow musicians and singer-songwriters across the globe. It was a new type of Americana — one that embraced a lost songbook of American folk, blues, rock and country and reinterpreted them […]

By Hayes Carll. Lost Highway. "…sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly." — Edward Albee, from The Zoo Story Though only in his early 30s, Hayes Carll seemed to have taken the long way ‘round. But his way. The Texas singer-songwriter […]

Album by Robert Forster. Yep Roc Records The story of The Go-Betweens is, to paraphrase a Jean Luc-Godard film, one of a "band of outsiders," one of travelling along the fringes of contemporary pop music, without ever breaking into the mainstream. When The Go-Betweens first started, they developed in the mid-1970s alongside more "rogue" Australian […]

Album by Sam Amidon. Bedroom Community. The past several years have been bumper-crop years for singer-songwriters following down the path of what is loosely defined as contemporary "Americana." The folk songs rescued and documented by legendary musical archivists Harry Smith and Alan Lomax have found a resurgence and inspired an attentive younger generation. Again. Harry […]

CD by Pete Molinari. Damaged Goods. With the release of his second full-length album, A Virtual Landslide, singer-songwriter Pete Molinari has created a beautiful, warm and sincere record of classic heartbreak songs. A Virtual Landslide is a series of perfect marriages, artistically speaking, making it one of the finest albums to be released so far […]

By Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Anti-/Mute Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, the new release from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is Cave’s pop record. Well, it’s his version of pop. Following on the heels of the elegant, stylistic, white gospel, two-disc epic Abaittoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheusand the cathartic dirge of his Grinderman side […]