At one point on Blitzen Trapper’s tenth studio offering, Holy Smokes, Future Jokes, bandleader Eric Earley sings, “Let’s do the world a favor, yeah / Let’s all go extinct” over a spry, upbeat hook that gives the music the feel… Read More
Lifetime of Comedy is the new release from the Parson Red Heads. The collection will be released on 13 November via Portland, Oregon’s Fluff and Gravy label. The collection follows the band’s 2017 effort, Blurred Harmony and features the lineup… Read More
Buoyancy (2010) is a powerful story about the plight of 14-year-old Chakra (Sarm Heng), who is sold into slavery and is trapped at sea, where he’s forced to trawl fish for long hours and meager meals. His story begins in… Read More
Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” sets a soundtrack to the unthinkable, telling of a crisis in the midst of childbirth, as told from a father-to-be’s perspective. Numerous artists have since covered the beautiful and harrowing ballad — most famously in… Read More
As a literary scholar, Andrew H. Miller is deeply immersed in the worlds created by authors. Fictitious worlds, and the people who populate them, often reflect the lives of their authors, yet Miller draws from a different idea: authors often… Read More
Godcaster’s debut album is a swirling, sloppy mess of guitars, drums, flutes, synths, and apparently whatever else the band had on hand in the Philadelphia basement where Long Haired Locusts was recorded. Their music seems to be equally influenced by… Read More
There are a number of ways to approach Sally Anne Morgan’s Thread. One could hear it as an LP influenced by 1970s-era fold-rock hybrids. Its opening track, a take on the British ballad “Polly on the Shore” — a song… Read More
Chris Smither’s latest LP, More from the Levee, will be released on 2 October. Produced by David “Goody” Goodrich, the collection is material primarily culled from sessions for the veteran singer-songwriter’s last collection, 2014’s Still on the Levee. That acclaimed… Read More
Sufjan Stevens has always been a man of many creative hats—electropop experimentalist, folky singer/songwriter confessionalist, and orchestral rock maestro, among others. So his music is reliably surprising, fascinating, and resonant. As hyperbolic as it may sound, he truly is a… Read More
We in California are at the vanguard of things to come; climate change brings us years of record-breaking drought, waves of excessive heat and unprecedented fires, and as California Governor Newsome has stated in a 11 September 2020 press conference,… Read More