The titular distance chronicled on Jess Cornelius’ solo debut album can be measured in a plethora of ways: geographical as someone born and raised in New Zealand before moving to Australia and now residing in Los Angeles, but also the… Read More
The mid-to-late 1990s saw English guitar music surrender entirely to domesticity. For a remarkable spell, Britain had been an incubator of cutting edge outsiders who secured an audience desiring both challenge and entertainment. Exhausted by a recent recession and a… Read More
People are strange. This is the lesson we learn from strangers. The English “strange” derives from the Old French estrange, which in turn derives from the Latin extraneus. Thus, that which is “strange” is extraneous to our usual understanding of… Read More
“Down here in the bottom, there ain’t no room for me. I don’t wanna make no babies, I don’t need a man to save me,” begins “SULA (Paperback)”, the latest single from Chicago singer, songwriter, rapper, poet, educator, and activist… Read More
Danny Kirwan – Second Chapter (1975) This album is the second chapter in Kirwan’s professional life, following his firing from Fleetwood Mac in 1972. He is a gifted guitarist and songwriter who seemed to have a dual persona: reportedly volatile and argumentative,… Read More
Pyramid is certainly a fitting title for the new Jaga Jazzist album. It’s beautifully structured and obviously crafted with meticulous care. The long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s Starfire sees the eight-piece band continuing to play with long-form song structure (four tracks… Read More
When Watchmen premiered last fall, its opening sequence set during the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 provided a harrowing entry point into the series’ tangled alternate history. Based on interviews with the makers and a swath of social media reactions,… Read More
There’s a strange beauty to Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards’ latest album, Total Freedom. She wistfully looks back at the people she’s known and loved, the places she’s lived and grown, and things she did and didn’t do. Edwards is hard-headedly… Read More
As age sets in, a lot of the thrill of new music is in hearing the rejuvenation and reinvention of tropes and approaches that one perhaps thought too familiar to contain fresh excitement. Evan Patterson’s latest album under his Jane… Read More
You will hardly find a band more defined by the covers they play than the Devonns on their self-titled debut album. The Chicago quartet led by singer-songwriter Mathew Ajjarapu delivers an exquisite fusion of their hometown soul heritage with Motown… Read More