Barry Gibb went to Nashville to make a country record of Bee Gees classics with Americana producer Dave Cobb. The result is Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, Vol. 1.
Coco Reilly's compositions offer delusions more than reveries as their narrators realize impressionistic visions disguise harsher realities.
In 2020, Americana artists empathetically dealt with the things that bind us together and keep us apart. The albums on this list encourage hope for the future based on a belief in the human spirit.
Kelsey Waldon covers seven famous protest songs to declare war on injustice today.
Jazz's Joe Castro is always in the groove and the other players in the pocket. There's a uniformity of taste on these records despite their different sources, styles, and periods from which they originally emerged.
Sam Amidon and band take nine folk songs from his debut into new territory by employing free jazz and avant-garde classical techniques.
Because Alive was recorded before the recent pandemic, there is something strangely dated about the whole concept of performing before a live audience. As a result, there is sort of a time capsule quality to it.
There's a lightness to Jennifer Castle's songwriting and performance on Monarch Season. She's not lonesome or abandoned; she's simply solitary in her thoughts and feelings.
"The Divided States of America" relates directly to the US Election Day. As Paul Simon would say, it's a modern desultory philippic about the state of the nation.
Mary Halvorson's Artlessly Falling is a challenging album with tracks comprised of improvisational fragments more than based on compositional theory. Halvorson uses the various elements to aestheticize the confusing world around her.
The thematic connections between these 10 Laura Veirs songs and our current situation are somewhat coincidental, or maybe just the result of kismet or karmic or something in the zeitgeist.
Blue Note Re:imagined provides an entrance for new audiences to hear what's going on in British jazz today as well as to go back to the past and enjoy old glories.
Patrick Cowley's Some Funkettes sports instrumental renditions from between 1975-1977 of songs previously made popular by Donna Summer, Herbie Hancock, the Temptations, and others.
Canadian singer-songwriter Helena Deland's first full-length release Someone New reveals her considerable creative talents.
On Waiting Out the Storm, Jeremy Ivey apologizes for present society's destruction of the environment and wonders if racism still exists in the future and whether people still get high and have mental health issues.
Low Cut Connie's Private Lives captures the spirit of the times. Adam Weiner is the James Dean of our time. We are the Sal Mineos and Natalie Woods in his orbit.
Fifty years after its original release, the Doors' Morrison Hotel is reissued as a two-CD /one-vinyl set that includes 19 bonus cuts.
One of the best rock bands of the 1980s, the Replacements show what alternative rock was all about on Pleased to Meet Me.
Brent Cobb's Keep 'Em on They Toes brings people together by reminding us of our unique individuality, and the things that bind us together are all part of the same gestalt.
British musician Ed Harcourt's instrumental music is full of turbulent swells and swirls that somehow maintain a dignified beauty on Monochrome to Colour.
On Shore, Fleet Foxes consist mostly of founding member Robin Pecknold. Recording with a band in the age of COVID-19 can be difficult. It was just time to make this record this way.
Arcade Fire's Will Butler creates bouncy, infectious rhythms and covers them with socially responsible, cerebral lyrics about American life past and present on Generations.
The Flaming Lips' American Head is a trip, a journey to the past that one doesn't want to return to but never wants to forget.
No one would call Angel Olsen's Whole New Mess a pretty album. It's much too stark. But there's something riveting about the way Olsen coos to herself that's soft and comforting.
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