Make no mistake, Portland’s TK & The Holy Know-Nothings are above all else a bar band. And quite possibly one of the best bar bands going at the moment. From the tear in your beer opening track, “Alone” to the boogie woogie vibe on a song like “Good Stuff,” there’s a song on Arguably OK to speak to just about anyone inside the bar. Elsewhere on the album, “Emanuel,” is…
South Jersey and Philly bands have long had a contrarian streak of playing music with no obvious allegiance to current fads or trends. The unfortunate mid-to-late ‘80s aside – a time when the region was deeply in the throes of hair metal – groups from Philly and the nearby Camden, NJ area have focused more on simply writing great songs, genres be damned, and creating intimate tight music scenes as…
Canadian artist Lucette has surrounded herself with some of the most talented names in modern Americana and country music – working with Dave Cobb on her 2014 debut and grabbing Sturgill Simpson to producer her latest record – but to call her music Americana or country would be a gross misstatement. Yes, there are hints of both here and there spread across Deluxe Hotel Room, but there’s also more liberal…
With his skin tight black jeans, leather biker jacket and Little Lord Fauntleroy jet black hairstyle, Brad Marino comes off one of the long lost Ramones on the cover of Extra Credit, his debut solo record. And the look is a pretty apt, as his songs can clearly match the Ramones in terms of catchy earworms. But unlike the boys from Queens, Marino digs much deeper into the crates for…
Megg Farrell readily admits it’s a crooked line that brought her to the sound she has now. She grew up a kid in New York jamming to indie rock and Riot Grrrl bands like Sleater-Kinney. A little later, camping and rafting through the South turned her on to Bluegrass and introduced her to the finger-picking style. Back in the Northeast, she started a band playing venues up and down the…
It’s hard to believe that Change of Pace, Andy Frasco’s latest LP comes on the heels of a break up and a realization that his cocaine-fueled lifestyle may need a little adjustment. From the opening funk-drenched title track and throughout most of the other 10 songs here, Frasco and his band have the same party vibe that has quickly attracted audiences across the globe over the past few years. But…
It’s been nearly 20 years since the Italian four-piece Peawees turned in their fantastically succinct argument that stellar garage and punk rock doesn’t belong to the ‘60s and ‘70s; Dead End City was a near-perfect expression of frenetic joy, anger, optimism and cynicism all trojan horsed in a dozen tracks. Originally released in 2001 on a small indie label in the Netherlands, it was tragically overlooked by just about most…
Mainstream Country music has gotten some bad press over the past few years because… well, it’s bad, sometimes dreadful. For the most part, it relies on clichés and unimaginative recycled themes and lyrics that appeal to the broadest, most unimaginative audiences out there. But then there’s those musicians that live in the shadows of Mainstream Country music – the authentic Americana bands, the Bluegrass groups that don’t give a shit…
Given today’s current sensitivities around, well, just about everything, it’s hard to image even a third of the movies profiled in Mike McPadden’s fantastically entertaining encyclopedia of teen comedies, Teen Movie Hell, ever being made. But for those who grew up in the ‘80s trying to catch a glimpse of nudity via scrambled cable movies on channels you didn’t subscribe to, or their slightly more watered down cinematic siblings on…
Scissor Sisters eponymous debut created quite a stir when it was unleashed on the world in 2004. It was an odd time for music, with Green going full rock opera on American Idiot, Avril Lavigne doing her best suburban bubble gum punk rock impression and a pre-douchebag Kanye West all competing for the attention of music buyers across the globe. Meanwhile, the New York-based pop/rock/dance Scissor Sisters came out of…
There’s certainly no big hole out there in the record collections of Rolling Stones fans when it comes to greatest hits albums. But if there’s any group in history of rock that would deserve yet another package of best of songs, it’s The Stones Honk collects a slew of hits (36 to be precise) that span the band’s 1971 classic Sticky Fingers up to their latest studio album 2016’s Blue & Lonesome.…
With their latest release, Rattlesnake, Canadian six-piece The Strumbellas have pivoted a bit away from their original neo-folk/alt country sound for a more pop sheen. And while this may cause some early adopters to walk away, it’s hard to ignore the charm and appeal of many of the tracks here. The album opener and lead single, “Salvation” is probably one of the band’s catchiest, most optimistic songs yet and a…
With Sotto Voce’s latest LP, Safety, it’s mastermind Ryan Gabos seems to have finally perfected his brand of moody, sometimes drowsy, pop music. The Pittsburgh native now holed up in Brooklyn (naturally), plays all of the instruments here, down to the programmed drum beats, and the result is a tidy satisfying collection of digestible pop ditties that swirl around long after you stop playing them. Residing somewhere between Yo La…
Just a year after the release of his 1974 comeback album, Professor Longhair – arguably one of the Big Easy’s most important exports – played a remarkable show on the deck of the Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach, CA, at party hosted, oddly enough, by Paul and Linda McCartney. That March 24, 1975 set was recorded and released a few years later and would go on to help the…
If Tom Waits had been born and raised on boudin and Tabasco sauce somewhere in rural Louisiana, he’d sound a hell of a lot like Rod Melancon. On Pinkville, Melancon’s fourth and most personal LP yet, the Cajun Dylan delivers a powerfully searing collection of Southern Gothic, swamp rock with tinges of Americana. The album starts out slow with the two gritty opening songs, the title track and “Goin’ Out…
Aree and the Pure Heart may call Atlanta home, but their influences reside several states up north, somewhere along on the Jersey Turnpike to be specific. Layered throughout the band’s stellar record Never Gonna Die, you here snatches of Gaslight Anthem, the Bouncing Souls and, of course, the OG, Springsteen. That’s not to say the band is simply aping someone else’s sound, they’ve just taken to heart the working class…
There’s something about Oklahoma. Over the past several years, some of the strongest, Americana/country/folk albums have been put out by native Oakies like Parker Millsap, John Fulbright and The Turnpike Troubadours. Add M. Lockwood Porter to the list. A native of Oklahoma – since relocated to Northern California – he carries on the Red Dirt tradition beautifully with Communion In The Ashes, his third album and a triumph in diversity.…
New York, by way of England, singer songwriter Bobby Long has turned in a strong, vulnerable record for his fourth effort, Sultans. Spanning 10 tracks, Long channels everyone from Elliott Smith and Al Green to Dylan for an emotional, at times soulful journey that covers the themes of all great folk artist: love, lost love and the inevitable heartache, the staples of a great soundtrack for the lonely. Far from…
Heartstrings, the debut full length from Belgium punks This Means War, easily proves that the band’s self-titled EP wasn’t simply a fluke. Across nearly a dozen tracks, this five-piece, teeming with a solid pedigree of influences from Cock Sparrer to the Bouncing Souls, turn in a wonderfully catchy, anthem-ready album that has all the trademarks of a modern punk rock classic. Taking their name from a 2014 Old Firm Casuals…
Philly has a long and storied musical past, from Blue Eyed Soul (Hall & Oates) and legit Soul (Gamble and Huff) to Hair Metal, lost and lots of Hair Metal (Cinderella, Britny Fox, Tangier, Poison…). But Bluegrass is not one of the genres that usually come to mind when you think of Philadelphia. The complicatedly-named Who? What? When? Why? & Werewolves? could possibly change that. On their 7-song debut, Greatest…