Guttural in one track, smothered in a synth’s playful harmony in another, the guitar parts that adorn the material we hear on the new Parker Longbough LP Green and Gold/Drink the Hemlock are at times reminiscent of early White Stripes records, 80s Seattle sludge and even the noise-laden riffs of Sonic Youth all at once, and yet they rarely translate as being overly experimental in songs like “Avalanche Beacon,” “Bad Attitude” and…
You would think that the subject of handling employee transitions between direct business competitors has a wealth of literature on the topic. You would be wrong. Attorney Steven Manchel writes about the issue with a objective and learned eye in his book “I Hereby Resign” Job Transitioning: How Individuals Properly Prepare, Resign and Move to the Competition, and How Companies Best Manage that Process. It has an agreeable length for the vast majority…
In their latest record, titled Time Has Made a Change, popular bluegrass group Jeff Parker & Company get back to basics in a time that has seen their peers doing anything and everything but, and as a result produce an album that could be the most focused of Parker’s extensive career. From the slow-churning swell of strings in “Southern Wind” to the crisp harmonies of a peaceful “Time Has Made a…
Angelic guitars and piano keys intertwine and dance without any inhibition in “Goodbye.” Those same guitars entertain a dangerous riff rock in “Nme” and “Arriianne” that couldn’t be any dirtier in tonality, but the melodies in these songs are as springy as what we’d find in “Underneath the Ground” and “Beleev.” Jeremy Rice can croon in full-color heartland harmony in “Johnny Rogers” just as well as he can spit punkish…
Mimosa Hygiene is the first collection from Nashville based duo The Criticals. The talents of Cole Shugart and Parker Forbes are formidable even after a single listen; this is a band who have their songwriting wrapped up far tighter than your average emerging act and I can’t point to a single track among the six included as an obvious example of filler. The Criticals, instead, come out of their corner swinging…
Somewhat somber and yet capable of encapsulating the honest optimism of the lyrics in the foreground, the piano plays with a tortured resilience at the start of “Don’t Stand a Chance,” the new single by Mattia Pironti, and its opulence will only grow more noticeable as we press on. Its keys frame a poetic window into the soul of Mattia Pironti that had only been teased in his first two…
With an opening stanza that starts off with the lines “Undercover operations takes / A lotta discipline and patient waitin’ / Gotta secretly manipulate / To speed fate up,” MkX is getting real with us in his new song “right place, at the right time” and causing a stir among critics and fans for the third time in 2019. MkX is no loose cannon in “right place, at the right…
Tummyache’s Humpday opens with “Machine”, an often raucous cry from the heart looking to wrest meaning and purpose from a world often seeming to lack both. The five songs included on this EP release embrace that as theme. Songwriter Soren Bryce, through her inter and intra personal relationships, is an artistic voice chronicling how to hang onto your emotions in the general miasma of modern life. The roughhewn musical feel of “Machine”…
John DeNicola might not be a household name, but he should be, because you’ve probably heard his work in one form or another, whether you realize it or not. And his new album is his debut solo record, but it’s not exactly clear to me what’s all original and what is covered concerning both his own past works and covers of other’s work on this disc. What is clear to…
Black & Blue: Love, Sport and the Art of Empowerment is Andra Douglas’ fictionalized rendering of a lifetime loving the game of football and being told she couldn’t play. Good thing for us she never took those words to heart. Readers are treated to an often picturesque account of her upbringing in the American South, her relocation to New York City to pursue a career in the early Eighties, and…
