Springsteen and the Silver Medal Syndrome
On the Billboard Hot 100 list, Bruce Springsteen endures the second-place status of silver medal syndrome year after year.
folk
Moonrisers’ Debut ‘Harsh & Exciting’ Is a Folk Treasure
Moonrisers fuse musical influences without traditional conventions. This genre-blurring approach uses tradition and innovation to evoke feeling and imagery musically.
Scottish Psych-folk Group òrain Reside in the Abstract
òrain’s Hanging Fruit is a cornucopia of pastoral delight, offering dream-like vignettes, where the unknowing is the point.
El León Pardo Offers a Celestial Reimagining of the Known
El León Pardo carves out new corners while slipping in a few nods to pre-colonial indigenous musical ideas, soaking them in reverb and layering on slippery grooves.
I’m With Her Masterfully Appreciate the Wild Blue World
I’m With Her’s new LP is a knock-out because of the talents of its performers, but sneaks up on the listener through an appreciation of its deeper concerns.
Amazonian Band Kayatibu Transmit the Forest’s Voices
Kayatibu’s NI HUI explores encounters between human societies, humans and animals, and plants and humans, and is proudly infused with the Amazon’s life force.
Elana Sasson’s Persian and Kurdish Influences Are Captivating
Elana Sasson is brilliant, and In Between is yet another elegant work treating tradition and high art with dignity and reverence while finding new ways to present them.
Ollella Makes the Political Personal on ‘Antifragile’
Ollella’s Antifragile has enough beauty to remind us of how liberating having respect and an open mind can be in these troubled times.
Jeffrey Martin: Emissary of Heartrending Songs
Jeffrey Martin doesn’t just sing a song; he unearths its pain. His songwriting is exhilarating in its honesty and grief, constantly storming forward like a tempest.
Cornelia Murr Has a Hypnotic Way of Expressing Self-Discovery
Cornelia Murr’s new LP finds the artist at her most refined. The songwriting is imaginative and introspective; she has a hypnotic way of expressing self-discovery.
Joan Osborne Deserves to ‘Relish’ Her Triumph 30 Years Later
Today, Joan Osborne stands among the most underrated singer-songwriters of her time because most people don’t know how well she can sing or write.
Jesse Welles Sounds Assured on the Multidimensional ‘Middle’
Youthful Arkansas native Jesse Welles has been at it for years but moves beyond protest music to the sophisticated alternative country of Middle.