Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about music, covering the latest as well historical topics.
Secretly Group kicked off a long weekend of events by honoring their flagship artist, Jason Molina, who is more relevant than ever, with a tribute set from Magnolia Johnson Electric Co.
The Fierce and the Dead have traditionally pivoted between stoner and psychedelic hooks, suffused with sultry grooves undulating beneath the murky words.
Gretchen Parlato’s The Wise Ones is the perfect place to first encounter her. I still call it jazz, but we can also call it joyful, sublimely crafted music.
As Ray Wylie Hubbard rocks through Texas and southern swamps, he doesn’t sound like he’s running out of steam. Reel 2 Reel 4 Real should be a continuation, not a capstone.
Upper Wilds’ Mercury is for anyone raised on stoner rock, punk, or a combination of the two, who’s constantly complaining that nobody makes that kind of music anymore.
The names Dolly Parton and Beyoncé, when associated with the song “Jolene”, change what we might expect to hear from the song’s narrator—but to what extent?
With his penchant for deep emotional hooks and insight, Joshua Bassett’s music has always been easy to get under your skin. Easier is his best.
Henry Threadgill’s Cut You Where You Was has a pointillistic quality. It offers tapas from his kitchen: one main dish to start, plus a masterpiece of more than 12 minutes.
Plum are a hugely talented post-punk band and the songs on Bodies in Motion are tight, smart, and infectious. Turn the music up loud and dance like it’s 1980.
Something sexy and sleazy is at work, even when Mitch Woods sings the blues, like the heat of a good Creole sauce can make even a crawfish feel like an epicurean pleasure.
The wah-wah pedal. It’s the foot-stomping device guitarists use to add a taste of toe-tapping funk or cosmic psychedelic noodling, and then it moved to the saxophone.
Oklahoma noise band Chat Pile mix more melody into their bleak message on another powerful, unsettling collection, Who Loves the Sun.
