“It sure feels good to be singing again,” Bill Callahan’s earthy baritone grins on ‘Writing’, one of the countless gems on his first studio album since 2013’s Dream River. In the intervening period, the 53-year-old has been preoccupied with marriage, fatherhood…
Fifteen years. So much changes in fifteen years. For Calexico and Iron & Wine, what’s changed is the nature of how they record. Years To Burn is a decidedly different beast than their 2005 collaboration In The Reins. There were…
Ten years previously, George Wallace infamously stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama in a doomed bid to prevent two black students from enrolling. Now here was Neil Young, on stage at the school’s auditorium in 1973, breaking…
This year sees the 30th anniversary of the Divine Comedy’s formation, Neil Hannon’s chamber pop ensemble with a revolving door policy on members. Twenty years on from the end of their greatest commercial successes, Office Politics is their twelfth studio…
Sometimes things hit you immediately, and sometimes they just smack across the face when you least expect it. The Gus by Mark Mulcahy is a case in point. I listened to it for the better part of a day and…
Take a deep breath, because Breathe Shallow by Firefly Burning is likely to take your breath away again and again. The staccato strings opening ‘It Won’t Be Long’ immediately inform listeners this record defies expectations. Attempts at categorisation are ultimately…
A group of black children looking through a chain link fence at a carnival in the distance is the cover of Mavis Staples’ new album We Get By. The image is from a photo essay published in 1956 by Gordon…
On his latest EP release, Anand Manivannan has gone on record to say, “Scars & Wounds is about those people in life you never outgrow, but carry with you as a mark on your soul, cursed with the scars that…
According to Cate Le Bon a reward can be quite sinister, especially in these Trumpian times. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word, and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it…
Kelly Hunt plays banjo in a way most other people don’t. Her calfskin tenor banjo is unique, different than anything made today. “I opened up the case and it said ‘This banjo was played by a man named Ira Tamm in his dog and…