Music In Review

This is the girl who changed it for all of us girls in the ‘70s. Patti Smith. She was beyond cool. Counter culture and cultured. She was a bona fide poet. She was an artist. A balls-out skinny wisp of a woman with an electric guitar hanging from her shoulder. Her voice, in modulating harmonies, […]

When a young Alex Chilton snuck into the fledging Ardent Studios in Memphis in 1969, conducting after-hours sessions with the studio’s proprietor Terry Manning, he had no inkling that he would lay down a blueprint for his future solo releases. In a prolific explosion as a songwriter, Chilton recorded an eclectic collection of pop songs […]

There’s not a lot for young people to do in Athens, Ala., a small town just south of the Tennessee border. So when a group of young music geeks got together to fight off the boredom, eventually forming a band and exploring their musical chops, it was a typical story. What’s atypical, however, is that […]

Bad shit happens — just ask Mac Rebennack. The New Orleans session guitarist was forced to switch over to piano/keyboards after he was shot in the finger in the early ’60s. At that time, he had also entered a bitter cycle of heroin addiction and jail, his “lock down” period, which would haunt him for […]

Hip hop duo THEESatisfaction was formed by Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White while they were undergraduates in Seattle bonding over mutual musical interests: old school hip hop, jazz and neo soul (Bilal and Jill Scott for example). They soon began to collaborate on mixtapes, employing singing and rapping, while honing the music bed in post-hip […]

After The Shins’ last record, the 2007 release Wincing the Night Away, bandleader, songwriter and vocalist James Mercer dismissed his entire band. He then reconfigured the line-up with a group of indie musicians including drummer Joe Plummer from Modest Mouse, Crystal Skulls bassist Yuuki Matthews and Eric D. Johnson from The Fruit Bats. It’s no […]

LA-based composer, multi-instrumentalist and performer Julia Holter drew critical attention in 2010 with the release of her mostly ambient, full-length debut Tragedy. It didn’t prepare anyone for her new release, Ekstasis, meant to be a companion piece (home recorded roughly in the same period as Tragedy), contrasting vastly from its predecessor, exhibiting a pop sensibility […]

Shouldn’t our North American neighbors in Canada have an equal right to lay claim to what is loosely termed “Americana” music? Three principle ‘60s Canadian artists — Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young — contributed immensely in changing the landscape of contemporary folk and rock: In the current wave of “alt.” folk-country, there are […]

In a 2008 New York Times piece, the maverick guitarist Bill Frisell praised the musicianship of violinist Jenny Scheinman, commenting, “She can play out or free or whatever, but you always hear that center, that melody thing, which is so important.” It’s evident when listening to Scheinman’s work in various collaborations, including numerous projects with […]

The title for Leonard Cohen’s new album, Old Ideas, was the original title for Cohen’s previous studio album, 2004’s Dear Heather. As opposed to the bare production (and cheesy keyboard arrangements) that dominated Dear Heather, Old Ideas is fitted with a sharper suit — acoustic guitars, drum, bass, organ — that elegantly adorn Cohen’s intimate […]

Initially emerging five years ago from an art project collaboration between classically-trained composer/multi-instrumentalist Evan Abeele and photographer/vocalist Denise Nouvion, Memoryhouse has slowly coalesced into a band. The Canadian duo grew over a number of years of touring from a “slow-gaze” ambient version of Damon & Naomi into an unashamed indie pop entity, adopting ‘80s and […]

After gaining a critical buzz and a growing fan base since the release of Sharon Van Etten’s 2010 breakthrough, epic, the Brooklyn-based, singer-songwriter has lived a fairly nomadic life: loads of couch surfing and lodging in motel rooms spanning the globe. In between frequent tours, Van Etten recorded Tramp, a new studio release that captures […]