No matter the tempo they’re arranged in or the velvety vocal they’re paired with in songs like “Ballad of Mary Ann,” “I’m Gonna Wait on Jesus” and “March Around Jericho,” the strings are almost always the brightest of a thousand shimmering elements for us to behold in the new album Take Me Back from bluegrass players Carolina Blue. Whether you’ve heard either of their first two albums prior to picking up Take Me…
Gentle and capable of inspiring great warmth within the listener in “You Made the Break.” Churning up a storm the size of Tennessee in “Turkey in the Straw.” Blanketing us with a groove no true ‘grass fan could ever resist in the title track of Banjo Player’s Blues much like as they would in the equally nimble “Helen.” Both steeped in balladry for “Dear God” and lit up with a vitality that…
Garage punk revivalists essentially reshaped the narrative for American and Canadian indie rock in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, and for those of us who are old enough to remember what the before and after sounded like for that era in popular music, it’s easy to understand why The Confusionaires are clicking with millennials as well as they are with the release of their new album From the Headache to…
The NC based Nathan Oliver are back with a more organic style album on the fourth release by the pop songwriter with the more recently acquired Joe Caparo and Brad Porter being a big part of the different style applied to Thank You For Your Generosity. The usual standard in which Oliver can be proud of is still there but it is gutsier and rougher around the edges, over the…
Smile While You’re Wasted is the new album from Austrian singer/songwriter Marc Miner. The personality-filled Miner and his backing band unleash a fiery, fun mix of country twang, rockabilly and folksy fun in 11 smattering tracks. Sure to get you boot scootin’ across the dance floor and raise your beer glass in the air, Miner taps into the merriment of music to ease the troubled soul of a listener on…
Made up of flutes that resemble a whispering wind, strings that bring forth massive, groove-focused riffs, heavily surreal synth melodies that allude to a post-rock sensibility and soul-crushing poetry sourced from a Dylan-esqe folk influence, to describe Twin Flames’ new album Omen as anything other than a colorful cocktail of definitively Canadian sounds simply wouldn’t be doing it justice. In its lead single, “Battlefields,” and many of its other eleven songs, Omen introduces us…
It’s hard to imagine, but the album Summer of Love is the first solo effort for Project Grand Slam’s Robert Miller. If you’ve been paying attention to the funk and jazz genre, then you know that Project Grand Slam is innovative and relentless entertaining. Miller, now at the helm of his own collection, never misses a beat and slides the listener into a comfortable sonic journey. Personal and in part,…
If there’s one thing FrankySelector isn’t interested in right now, it’s contemporary synthetics as they apply to a hook, and if this wasn’t known to the world before, it will be once “She’s so Carefree” finds regular rotation somewhere on the dial this September. Celebrating the foundations of funk and pop music while planting its stylistic feet firmly in the experimental camp, “She’s so Carefree” is probably one of the…
What you believe is your business. For many believers, the business of believing isn’t a business at all, it’s faith. Put together with music, the inspiring words and conviction of one can indeed add conviction and confidence to many, many people. Antwan Jenkins, a Christian singer and songwriter from Indianapolis, has a spirited effort in both of his new songs “More Of You” and “Victory”. Will Jenkins convert you? Maybe.…
Imagine the pressure of finding the song that will often define you and is your listeners’ first impression. If you’re a singer, and maybe you didn’t directly work on writing the song, you have to choose from a pile of songs that showcase your voice, your demeanor. In “We Are Us” country singer Savannah Nider, a newcomer to the national scene, not only choses a song that enriches the world,…
