The Ridges call their music “orchestral folk rock”, and they’d very much like you to believe that that’s true. The opening track on their self-titled mini-album (as an aside, what makes a five track mini-album different to an EP? Answers…
Author: Joe Skrebels
Joe is a layabout, grammar enthusiast and part-time Latvian. He tweets under the moniker of @2plus2isjoe and blogs at Music From A Green Window.
Interview | Josh T. Pearson
Last of the Country Gentlemen, as a statement about Josh T. Pearson, only tells half the story. This year’s masterpiece of gutwrenchingly personal country-folk is expertly recounted, masterfully played and needfully drawn-out. But in talking to the man or seeing…
Album | Other Lives – Tamer Animals
If you like at least some music, it seems unlikely that you could possibly dislike Other Lives. It’s just a fact. Tamer Animals, their second album under this band moniker, is a record satiated by generic influences, gracefully pirouetting from…
Album | I Break Horses – Hearts
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I Break Horses have been created by a fiendish group of artists simply to confound music critics and disprove our own, limited art. As an explanation, here are the facts about the…
Album | Mechanical Bride – Living With Ants
The once-rarefied (some would say shunned) musical zone of the singer-songwriter has become rather crowded in recent years, a space for any old chap with a guitar and a vintage waistcoat and, as with any burgeoning cultural phenomenon, the more…
Album: The Antlers – Burst Apart
The Antlers’ last release, 2009’s Hospice, was many things – a story of love and loss, a tragedy, an allegory, a (say it softly) concept album – and could be described in many ways – emotional, heartwrenching, shattering, beautiful. To…
Album: Timber Timbre – Creep On Creepin’ On
The concept of “genre fiction” or the “genre movie” is never one that’s stretched into the musical realm. Music is dealt with in terms of genres, but the idea of a band belonging to “genre music”, a set of recognisable,…
Album: The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh
The Low Anthem are a band of two distinct worlds. Treading a line between traditional, perhaps even stereotypical, American country music and a more modern, indie-folk perspective, the band have manifested this schism in different forms over the years. 2008’s…
Album: Peter Stampfel and Jeffrey Lewis – Come On Board
Frankly, by now we should be used to Jeffrey Lewis’ musical left turns. After albums of Crass covers, multimedia sing-songs about the rise of communism and just about the most disparate set of song subjects across a career (falling asleep…
Album: Hurray for the Riff Raff – Young Blood Blues
New Orleans is an evocative city. It’s the home of jazz and the delta blues, a city steeped in musical history and prestige. But alongside these more positive facets, drama is never far around the corner – this is the…