Samantha Crain’s fourth release is notable for its surefootedness. All of Crain’s songs are anchored on strong, straightforward melodies that are buttressed by her delicate lyrics. The album focuses on short stories that make the everyday lives of her characters…
One of the most surprising facts I learned at the Country Music Hall of Fame is that the Everly Brothers are members. I don’t really hear it — in my mind they’re very solidly a part of rock’n’roll, even if…
Clocking in at 17 minutes, it might be easy to think that J Marinelli’s Stop Paying Attention is a paean to distraction. With his fuzzed out, distorted vocals and the music’s rip-roaring pace, it’s almost as if he’s challenging us…
If you’re not drawn in by the confident power pop swagger on Come On‘s titular track, then you probably don’t have a pulse. The rest of the album is like a Snickers bar — sugary but oddly satisfying (fun fact:…
If there’s one band I’d pick to listen to during the apocalypse, it’d be The End Men. Their bass and drumlines are nothing less than earth-shattering, a fitting soundtrack to the destruction of the Gomorrah I’ve chosen to surround myself…
This may sound like an overstatement, but Chuck Hawthorne’s debut album, Silver Line, sounds to my brain like the platonic ideal of country music. This wasn’t a conscious decision. As I did the tourist thing in Nashville and stood on…
I think Annie Woodward would have been most at home in New York City at the Sidewalk Cafe back in the early 2000s. I bet she and Kimya Dawson would have gotten on famously. But she’s ten years too late…
I’m fresh back from a whirlwind tour of Nashville (really it was more like four days of touristing and two days of “what do I do in this one-horse town while waiting for concerts to start?”) and felt pretty humbled…