Grace Basement — Mississippi Nights
Fountains of Wayne hit the big time when I was in middle school. For me, they were the first band from New York that I truly fell in love with, and hearing about my hometown in songs I related to…
Terra Naomi — “Machine Age”
Do you remember where you were a year ago? I was steadfastly ignoring the inauguration and mentally girding my loins for a long, tough year ahead. In some ways, it’s been worse than anyone imagined. Terra Naomi’s heartrending “Machine Age”…
Greg Owens and the Whiskey Weather — You Can’t Change the Man
If there’s one narrative I’ll never get tired of, it’s the jaded sad-sack guy. It’s been a little bit since I’ve been broken through that headspace myself (is that what adulthood is? Or could be?) But something still leads me…
Hardworker — Go Alone
The Durham, NC band Hardworker is drawn some comparison to the Alabama Shakes and, let me tell you, it’s well-deserved. Hardworker delivers blistering rock that delivers equal parts Muscle Shoals and Laurel Canyon. Take the Wild Reeds and turn the…
Evan Bartels — The Devil, God, And Me
It’s interesting to notice trends across the thousands of songs that come my way in a given month. For example, there was a minute where everyone’s album covers were composite illustrations of tiny images associated with each song on the…
The MSGs — Chuck
Fukuoka is, for whatever reason, the punk rock heart of Japan. Sure, Tokyo has an enormous scene, but if you want some good old-fashioned guitar music — and you want to see it multiple nights a week — you gotta…
The Hollering Pines — Mansion of Heartbreak
The Hollering Pines call their sophomore album a collection of “worried songs for worried times.” And while it’s not surprising that I’d write about music with an underpinning of anxiety, that’s not necessarily what I’d call Mansion of Heartbreak. Certainly…
Della Ridge — Country Music From the North
I would be most indebted to anyone who can explain why so many Scandinavian musicians perform in English. For a genre that so heavily relies on lyrics, it can be tough to dig into a folk or country song if…