With a scooped EQ and overdrive as heavy as a pile of cinderblocks, Terry Ohms lays into the opening riff of “King of The Mountain,” the first sounds we’ll hear in his new album Cold Cold Shoulder, and while this deluge of distortion and evocative noise is about as stirring a first few bars as any indie rock fan could ask to hear in a new record this February, they’re only…
Health care is one of the forever burning issues in our modern American life and, despite the efforts of many intelligent and talented men and women, the strides that have been made are often under assault and many are still pining away for effective care. Meghan FitzGerald has been on the front lines of that battle in her service as a nurse, but she continues to fight for a better…
If you are looking for a book about life that’s different from the usual account and non-fiction, I think you can scarcely do better than Rebekah Bastian’s Blaze Your Own Trail: An Interactive Guide to Navigating Life with Confidence, Solidarity, and Compassion. I think the word solidarity in the title is unquestionably important. She tailors this book to speak to women’s experience in modern life, particularly American life, though the book reaches…
In a gust of a verse that will set the tone for all of the kaleidoscopic harmonies soon to follow, Chris Mardini begins our journey into his heart amidst the opening bars of “Sleepless,” his third single currently out everywhere that quality independent pop is sold and streamed. There’s a bit of melancholy in his voice, but it’s nowhere near as strong as the optimism that drives the words cascading…
Welcome! We are excited to get to chat with you! We saw that you posted recently after your show in New York and you said that it was the best stage you have played. What made it so amazing? Red: There’s nothing really quite like New York, so we were super excited to be a part of the nightlife in that city. But all things considered, it was definitely all…
Critics have been getting excited about rockers Kings County since the 2019 release of their eponymous debut, and for good reason – riddled with strong-armed, rhythmic hard rock elements that their peers have mostly abandoned, the group’s sound follows the beat of its own drum both literally and figuratively, frequently bringing to mind some of the greatest entities in the history of the genre. Their guitar parts are studded with…
Gusty grooves adorn the string balladry of “Never Apart.” Discordant minor-key harmonies make merry with a happy-go-lucky swing beat in “Never Miss.” Ruark seduce us with a glowing melody in “Naturally,” the staggering “Sick of It,” “Time Wouldn’t Waste Away” and the title track of their new album When You Coming Home with as much ease as they do when provoking thoughts unique to every listener in a contemplative “Sweet Senseless World,”…
When it comes to getting personal in a song, there aren’t a whole lot of country groups as adept and skillful as Flat River Band are in most every song they record, and in their fifth studio album, the retrospective Every Dog Has Its Day, they impart one provocative country tale after another as though we were sitting with the power trio around a blazing flame in the wilderness. The fireside…
A gentle percussion and a gorgeous piano dance back and forth with one another as we listen in on the first few bars of Rob Alexander’s “Friend of Mine (Elton’s Epic),” and with the sway of every beat, we find a little bit more color within the growing melody before us. Alexander starts to sing, and even though his initial attack is as soft and decadent as the rhythm of…
The late 2010s produced a lot of interesting singer/songwriters, and among the more intriguing that I heard in 2019 was Andy Michaels, whose record Incendiary Heart raised a lot of eyebrows in his native Australia as well as overseas in the United States. A product of hybrid creativities and eclectic collaborations with singers like Tiarna Madison and Kerry Ironside, Incendiary Heart takes everything that was suggested as being possible in Michaels’ debut LP Revisited and reshapes…
