In their Ned Luberecki-produced debut album, appropriately titled Starry Southern Nights after one of its most moving tracks, Rock Hearts seek to establish themselves as melodic players who can balance the finer points of bluegrass sophistication with a homespun roots sound most anyone can get into these days, and for this critic, they hit a homerun right out of the park. In songs like the namesake and its tracklist neighbor, the agile…
Today, we are speaking with Bérénice. Can you give us a little background information about yourself? My name is Bérénice and I’m sixteen years old, almost seventeen. I sing since I’m born it feels like. Singing is my everything since forever, and I work so hard everyday to perfect my skill. I love it, in a way that makes me feel powerful. I also play the clarinet since I’m nine…
It’s been awhile, but one of my favorite politically-charged commentary songs is Green Day’s “American Idiot”. It seems like a lifetime ago musicians and leaders alike were grumbling about George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Fast forward to 2020, and the world is topsy turvy over COVID-19 and the era of Donald J. Trump. It’s inevitable that singers and songwriters reflect int their music the times, and one such…
I’m So Black has a downright dark, horrorcore-infused backing beat to provide a solid counterpoint to the rapid-fire lyrical flow laid down here by Emcee Monte. The confident, assertive patois of EM will tattoo the song deep into the minds and hearts of listeners. The heartbeat-like beat acts as a solid counterpoint for the spontaneity exhibited here by Emcee Monte. The song is easily able to slot into rap playlists…
Let’s hope this isn’t the last one, the last song from singer extraordinaire Manny Cabo. “The Last One”, a moving Americana-pop track from the now Nashville-based singer is the latest string of releases from a former contestant on The Voice. Proving he’s much more than a voice, his emotional delivery and a commanding presence are just two pivotal turning points in Cabo’s stirring “The Last One”. Matching his heartfelt delivery…
If an artist manages to release at least four records in their career, history tells us that everything we need to learn about the depth of the player’s craft can be found in the tracklist of the first and last of this set. Enter Jake Allen’s Affirmation Day – in his fourth release, this singer/songwriter is committed to making sure that the very notion of holding back from the audience…
Bass, keys, a moderate string component and a glistening lead vocal – outside of these key elements, there isn’t much more comprising the new single “Barcelona Butterflies” from Leni Black, and while it’s only the first release we’ve heard out of the talented singer/songwriter’s camp thus far, it’s absolutely one heck of a statement if I’ve ever heard one before. INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/leni.black/ Espousing a narrative that has become rather popular…
19-year-old Rap artist JamalTheCreator has been making high strides these past few months amid the global pandemic. From going viral on YouTube to chart on billboards, Jamal has been establishing his presence. The uploads of his recent singles “All On Me”, “Trust Issues”, and “This Is The Life” have been the talk around town lately. Most of those tracks effortlessly reached thousands of streams throughout SoundCloud in a matter of…
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…
Shayne Cook’s Epiphonetics is a welcome addition to a tumultuous year. Creativity continues thriving despite an ongoing pandemic claiming untold lives and this, if nothing else, confirms some aspect of mankind’s eternal optimism. The circles and cycles of life continue to spin, the world does not grind to a complete halt, and the human heart is subject to the same litany of travails, joys, lunacies, and peaks it experiences through its waking…
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…
Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest impact. Located on the historic tip of Lulu Island in British Columbia, the village of Steveston is a suburb of Richmond, Vancouver. Known for its scenic views and salmon, it’s also home to singer/songwriter, Jasmine Bharucha. The impressionable town is just one of the charms to Bharucha’s song “Fog Horn Blowing”. Joyful and having a catching chorus, “Fog Horn Blowing” rolls-in like…
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…
On Paper Cha$e, Ray Lugar & the Collective Force are able to blend together so many distinct approaches and styles that listeners cannot break themselves from the track This means that the guitar / drum dynamic builds off of the tradition of Rage Against The Machine, while there are nods to Danny Brown and Killer Mike in the furious, politicized lyrical content that bludgeons with each line. The amount of…
All Amped Up’s guitars build upon the momentum tradition of hard rock acts like Judas Priest and AC/DC’s. Keifer’s vocals sound as vibrant and intense as they did back in 1988. Hitting fans over their heads with the titular phrase, Keifer is given additional oomph through splashy drums and some seriously sick bass interlacing itself through the instrumentation. With each side of #keiferband playing through on high gear, it’s no…