“The Smoke And The Stars,” the opening track off of Jason Hawk Harris’s debut album is an impressive, emotional ballad, but one that belies what’s to follow shortly. The building swell of strings and deeply personal lyrics sounds amazing, but ultimately (and thankfully), Harris devotes much of the record to a more stripped down, laid back, wink and a nod approach to Americana. “Cussing At The Light,” the very next…
Not long before Kim Fowley pulled together and ultimately terrorized (or inspired depending on whose version of the story you’re following) the brilliant teenaged, all-female rock band The Runaways, he helped establish the nearly as brilliant, but short-lived, glam rock/power pop five piece The Hollywood Stars. Fowley pulled in a disparate collection of Southern California musicians and went about co-writing, producing and working on his Svengali-in-training role with the group.…
Stripped-down blue collar punk rock anthems are certainly not a new phenomenon. Everyone from Tim Barry and Frank Turner to Dave Hause have made a living crisscrossing the globe for the past decade-plus playing Springsteen meets The Clash-inspired ditties. But, Dylan Disaster’s latest, Remission, proves there’s still room for at least one more on the tour bus. Thirteen tracks cram the latest from this Long Island native, now calling Austin…
Although Mike Jacoby offers hints of Americana and even rockabilly throughout his third solo offering, the record is still firmly planted in the world of rootsy rock and roll. Jacoby cites folk troubadour Todd Snider as an inspiration for Long Beach Calling, but it’s just as easy to pick out influences from folks like John Fogerty and The BoDeans here. The opening song, the rollicking title track with its Johnny…
Although Mike Jacoby offers hints of Americana and even rockabilly throughout his third solo offering, the record is still firmly planted in the world of rootsy rock and roll. Jacoby cites folk troubadour Todd Snider as an inspiration for Long Beach Calling, but it’s just as easy to pick out influences from folks like John Fogerty and The BoDeans here. The opening song, the rollicking title track with its Johnny…
In the 11-year span of their first run, Australia’s Crowded House could simply do no wrong, churning out one brilliant album after the next at a rate of just about an album every other year until their split in 1996. The band has since reunited twice – between 2006 – 2011 and again in 2016 – but it’s hard to find a period as creatively solid as their first four…
Geoff Palmer, best known for part in New Hampshire’s The Connection, proves his record collections contains so much more than old garage rock albums, with his Power Pop/Pop Punk-drenched new LP Pulling Out All The Stops. Combining the joyfully snotty vocals of The Ramones with the best parts of Cheap Trick and The Knack, Palmer’s latest, though brimming with 14 tracks, goes by remarkably quick, thanks in part to the…
Long before their music was co-opted for sappy TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill, the Scottish rock band Travis was churning out brilliant, guitar-centered music that oozed with emotion. No where is that clearer than on the just-released live set from the group’s 1999 appearance at the famed Glastonbury festival. Out for the first time on vinyl and CD thanks to Craft Recordings, the set captures the…
Just one year shy of their 20th anniversary as a band, and eight albums into it, The Dollyrots have just turned in their best effort yet. The 14-track Daydream Explosion, their first for Stevie Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records label, is simply pop punk perfection. From the spikey, fast guitars, the gorgeous female/male tradeoff vocals, machine gun drumming, and bratty defiant lyrics, there’s a feeling that The Dollyrots have been building up…
Tribute albums are almost always a mixed bag. And this second volume of Harry Nilsson songs is no exception. The covers run the gamut from incredible (Cheap Trick covering “Ambush” and Adam Matta’s beatbox accompaniment on “Driving Along”) to the quirky (Valley Queen’s peculiar version of “I Guess The Lord Must Be in New York City” and Belle-Skinner’s ukulele-backed “Open Your Window”) to the simply uninspired (Invisible Familiar’s trippy take…
To mark the Soundgarden’s 35th anniversary, A&M and UMe are putting out a slew of re-releases by band, including classic albums in limited edition colored vinyl. So now seems like an ideal time to revisit their best-selling and arguable flawless fourth album Superunknown. Initially put out in 1994, at the crest of the grunge movement, Soundgarden – one of the pioneers of the Seattle sound and a band that had already been…
More than three decades in the making, Heal, the debut record from A Picture Made, though ridiculously long overdue, manages to have been worth the wait. The Midwest kids (though long past being kids) came together in the 1980s and managed to open for some of the best college rock bands at the time, from The Call and The Connells to The Replacements. It’s not clear if it was a…
There’s not much grey area to Ellis Paul’s music: You either like the modern day folkie’s music or you don’t. And if you do happen to fall into former category, chances are you love it. Like John Prine and Gary Clark before him, minus the country/Americana influences, Paul is first and foremost a lyricist, telling a story with each and every song he puts out. The Storyteller’s Suitcase, Paul’s 20th…
The title track to Lukas Nelson’s fifth album pretty much sums up the focus of the record; people are generally good, so let’s focus on being kind to each other. And yes, it’s the type of sentiment that gets one branded a snowflake in 2019, but damn it’s good advice. And it sounds even better coming out in Nelson’s lazy, comforting drawl, backed by one of the best bands going…
It seems pretty appt that one-time BR5-49 member Chuck Mead would head to the iconic Sam Phillips Recording Studios in Memphis to make his latest as few in the Americana world have come across as easily an instant classic as Mead. Even though the band first came out in the ‘90s they had an instant timelessness to their music that you’d have been forgiven for assuming they’d cropped up in…
There have been numerous books written about Athens-based R.E.M. dating back to the mid-1990s, but few seem as personal as the latest entry from former Athenian Robert Dean Lurie. The book strength is also, at times, its biggest weakness. The author, who moved to Athens, GA in the ‘90s, in part thanks to its burgeoning music scene, inserts his own narrative into some of the book. And while it can…
Does the world really need another psychobilly supergroup? Turns out, that yeah, we kind of do. The Bats, a trio made up of members from Nekromantix, The Brains, Rezurez and Stellar Corpses, churn through 20 (20!) songs on their debut, Bat Music For Bat People and the music manages to be catchy enough that hardly a moment drags here. Yes, they dig up the old genre tropes (“Graveyard Girl,” “Cemetery Man,”), but with a…
Over the course of the past four decades, Wreckless Eric has evolved from being that quirky Stiff Records signing – who managed to brilliantly bridge the distance between labelmates The Damned and Elvis Costello, with his punk rock ethos slathered in strong poppy hooks – to being a reliably poignant songwriter turning in one album after the next filled with smartly written-stories steeped in nostalgia and keen observations. Transience is…
Just two tracks into Umpteenth, the sophomore LP from Brooklyn-based Onesie, you’d swear this was an early ‘90s college radio rock find, sandwiched between Pavement and The Breeders. Across 11 tracks, the band play a beautifully-cohesive brand of Power Pop, but it’s clear they also have a strong affinity for some of the classic Glam and 1970s rock bands as well after listening to the chugging guitars on a song…
Despite breaking up nearly 10 years ago, there are still few bands from the ‘80s and ‘90s that can still command allegiance from the masses like R.E.M. Sure there are a slew of groups from that era that can brag about cult status, but R.E.M is among the few who have managed to hold on to their core early adopters from their I.R.S. years and bring along an entire generation…
