If there is such a thing as an alt.country/Americana/whatever buzz band, this year it was Shovels & Rope. Heading to Pickathon this year, I was mostly excited to reunite with my Portland folks and drink during the afternoon for a few days. But Shovels & Rope was high on my short list of bands [...]
Hurray for the Riff Raff is the New Orleans group led by Puerto Rican, Bronx-raised Alynda lee Sygara, whose narrative reads like a folk song. After running away from home at age 17, she hopped freight trains and played crossing the country with The Deadman Street Orchestra. After two self-released albums, the UK label [...]
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve likely noticed that I have a wee (read: massive) crush on one Mr. Frank Turner, a British artist who is equal parts folk and punk and whom I like to refer to as “My Boyfriend Frank Turner.” And while this does, at times, make some people feel a [...]
I’d been tracking The Roadside Graves for a while now, and even ranked their last full-length, LP, My Son’s Home, in my Top 20 of 2009. They’ve been on a roll since then, releasing the fantastic EP, You Won’t Be Happy With Me, earlier this year. So they’d been on my must-see list for Pickathon [...]
Mumford and Sons is a four-piece band from London and one of my favorite discoveries of the last month or two. Their full-length Sigh No More will would definitely be comfortably near the top of my 2010 albums list –if it hadn’t been released in 2009. Not surprisingly, they seem to have been getting a [...]
Juniper Tar is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based band creating some some really beautiful melodic rock. Their 2010 Howl Street EP consists of four tracks filled with spacey, dreamy guitars, haunting melodies and three-part harmonies. There’s an underlying melancholy to this album, but enough serious guitar work to bring this album back to earth and remind you [...]
The Cave Singers are one of my favorite discoveries of the last few years. I can’t better describe this Seattle group than their Matador Records bio does, so here’s some stolen narrative for you: “Here is the mystery of Seattle’s Cave Singers. They never listened to much folk music, they never intended to play folk [...]
I first stumbled upon Portland’s The Builders and the Butchers by accident during a particularly frustrating evening spent trying to navigate 2007′s MusicFest NorthWest. MFNW is a well-intentioned local festival that hasn’t quite figured out how big it wants to be, or rather, how to manage how big it’s become. After getting shut out of [...]
There are undeniable similarities, both musical and topical, that connect a lot of of my favorite artists– The Hold Steady, American Aquarium, and these Jersey boys–The Gaslight Anthem. The thematic threads are youth, nostalgia, the romance of cars and front porches, premature death, the dark side of the party, and the agony of growing up. [...]