If Alas I Cannot Swim was Marling vs Fink and I Speak Because I Can was Marling vs Mumford, on A Creature I Don’t Know Laura strikes out on her own. This album doesn’t look to its contemporaries for influence…
Category: Records
Album | Tom Russell – Mesabi
A new Tom Russell album is always an event, and the veteran shows no signs of slowing down as he closes in on his seventh decade. And, from the rollicking ‘And God Created Border Towns’ and the title track to…
Album | Peggy Sue – Acrobats
I first saw Peggy Sue perform in the days when they were Peggy Sue and the Pirates, wearing fancy dress and singing funny, irreverent songs about Superman and wasted teenage girls. Their powerful voices and stage presence were already blindingly…
Singles Round-up | Treetop Flyers, Dark Captain, Marcus Foster, Channel Cairo
Treetop Flyers – It’s About Time (Communion) 2011 has been good to the Treetop Flyers to the extent that the buzz surronding them has accelerated so fast their recorded body of work can’t keep up. Winning Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent competition…
Album | The Bandana Splits – The Bandana Splits
Alright, so you might say that the last thing the world needs is another post-ironic retro girl band – even if Dawn Landes is involved. That sort of thing exhausted the patience a long time ago. Remember the Pipettes? Anyone…
Album | The Jayhawks – Mockingbird Time
I’ll be the first to admit that this is the first time I’ve listened to twin cities survivors The Jayhawks. Eight albums in may be an unfair time to form a first opinion of a band, but then it may…
Album recommendation | Middle Brother – Middle Brother
First things first, this is not a review of a new album. This collaboration between Deer Tick’s John McCauley, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith and Delta Spirit’s Matt Vasquez came out all the way back in February. It never got a proper…
Album | Dawes – Nothing Is Wrong
As the only Californian on the For Folk’s Sake writing roster, I felt it was my duty to grab Nothing Is Wrong by Dawes. Not only are they from Malibu, an oceanside haven near Los Angeles, but they sound more…
Album | Luke Temple – Don’t Act Like You Don’t Care
Don’t Act Like You Don’t Care is Luke Temple’s third solo album, which only goes to show I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do. I first heard about him through his band Here We Go Magic, and…
Album | Richmond Fontaine – The High Country
A simple but profound truth of gambling is that when you play for big stakes, the potential to lose heavily is sometimes obscured by the possibility of winning big. On Richmond Fontaine’s 10th album, frontman Willy Vlautin has set the…