Americana
Album: Wilco - Cruel CountryTuesday, 31 May 2022
As the pandemic receded, Wilco huddled together in Jeff Tweedy’s Chicago studio and played country songs, an easefully naturally act as the world around them shook. Though famed for the experimental, eerily timely Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001) and the... Read more... |
Album: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Dirt Does DylanFriday, 20 May 2022
I have to confess, it’s a long time since I’ve thought about the Nitty Gritty Dirty Band and a new album serves as a reminder of how good they were, and are. Formed in Long Beach, California in 1966 by a Bob Dylan-obsessed high school student named... Read more... |
Album: Willie Nelson - A Beautiful TimeWednesday, 27 April 2022
All power to Willie Nelson – marking his 89th birthday this week with a new album, A Beautiful Time. He and Trigger have been making music together for more than half a century, Nelson releasing his first album in 1962. From his pen have come some... Read more... |
Album: Kurt Vile - (Watch My Moves)Wednesday, 13 April 2022
Although the term “hipster” has become degraded to well beyond cliché, Kurt Vile is one of those artists whose fans may indeed have that in-the-know smugness. With Vile, though, this is not a bad thing. Given the increasingly confidence-shedding... Read more... |
Album: Cowboy Junkies - Songs of The RecollectionFriday, 18 March 2022
The 19th album from Canadian alt-country rockers, and very beguiling it is too. As its title suggests, Songs of the Recollection is a covers album, but such a description is reductive. Good songs live on, discovered anew by successive generations –... Read more... |
Cabell, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - transatlantic trafficFriday, 11 March 2022
Had he never written a note of his own, George Walker would still have left a record of trailblazing achievements. Born in Washington DC in 1922, he studied piano at Oberlin College and the Curtis Institute (the conservatoire that notoriously... Read more... |
Album: The Shires - 10 Year PlanFriday, 11 March 2022
Seems odd now, but there was a time when many Brits found country music laughable. It was a common thing. For instance, when Keith Richards embraced country, Jagger initially thought it a joke. By the time I was coming up in the Eighties, post-punk... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Sun Shines BrightTuesday, 08 March 2022
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the John Ford scholar Tag Gallagher quietly observes in the penetrating – and deeply moving – video essay he contributes to Masters of Cinema’s Blu-ray disc of Ford’s 1953 masterpiece The Sun Shines Bright. It’s... Read more... |
Album: Basia Bulat - The GardenThursday, 17 February 2022
On her sixth album, Basia Bulat re-records 16 of her own songs with specially created string arrangements. The Garden isn’t a best-of, more a recalibration of how the Canadian singer-songwriter sees herself through her music and how the meanings of... Read more... |
Album: John Mellencamp - Strictly A One-Eyed JackThursday, 20 January 2022
“I didn’t even know what I was writing about. It was just sent to me”, John Mellencamp has said of Strictly A One-Eyed Jack, his first album in five years.Lauded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Nora Guthrie, who sees in his work echoes of her father... Read more... |
Album: Kiefer Sutherland - Bloor StreetSaturday, 08 January 2022
Disclaimer: it’s a little unfair I’m reviewing Kiefer Sutherland’s third album. He seems alright, left-ish for an American, done his time in the bad boy lane, sense of humour, tried his hand at this and that, even as a rodeo-rider, and has... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2021: Chrissie Hynde - Standing in the Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob DylanWednesday, 05 January 2022
So, it’s been another world-beating year. Known unknowns and unknown unknowns – at least two people have set Donald Rumsfeld’s 2002 Pentagon musings to music, and I’m sure I’m not alone in finding his words rather useful. Indeed, it’s not hard to... Read more... |
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