country

Album: Toria Wooff - Toria Wooff

Monday, 24 March 2025

On the cover of her eponymous debut album, the Bolton-raised Toria Wooff reclines on a church pew located in Stanley Palace, a 16th-century mansion in her adopted city of Chester. In her hand, a Celtic Cross. Such imagery implies that what will be...

Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

Friday, 14 March 2025

America – the pro-wrestling-ass nation, the ultimate society of the spectacle – famously likes things big, and modern country and western music has gone along with that. Big hats, big trucks, big sentiment, big pop production, very big sales indeed...

Album: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Purple Bird

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

Somewhat astoundingly, The Purple Bird is Will Oldham’s album number 21 using his Bonnie “Prince” Billy alias. A fine set of alt country tunes, recorded in Nashville and largely co-written with producer David Ferguson, it also happily suggests that...

Katy J Pearson, Saint Luke's and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - warm-hearted songs to banish the cold

Thursday, 05 December 2024

'Tis the season for all manner of bugs, colds and illnesses. One had befallen Katy J Pearson, who struck an apologetic note after the night’s first number to say she had been unwell all day and was going to do her best to get through the gig. That...

Album: Dolly Parton & Family - Smoky Mountain DNA - Family, Faith & Fables

Wednesday, 13 November 2024

This is almost too much to bear. This sprawling 37-track collection begins with the sainted 78-year-old Dolly Parton providing a jaunty spoken narration of her family’s history in music and the church. It’s old-school Disney documentary in tone, but...

Album: Willie Nelson - Last Leaf on the Tree

Friday, 01 November 2024

Well, seems like only yesterday when I reviewed Willie Nelson’s last album, Borderline, an excellent set from the man’s ninth decade, and now here comes Last Leaf on the Tree, a consummate set that’s at a higher level.It opens with Tom Waits’ title...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 86: Molly Tuttle, Depeche Mode, Pharoah Sanders, Seefeel, Hinds, Sofi Tukker and more

Tuesday, 15 October 2024

VINYL OF THE MONTHHannah Scott Absence of Doubt (Fancourt Music)Sometimes a singer comes along who’s not stylistically my thing at all, but their voice has a quality that wrenches, reaches inside, beyond usual taste judgements. For me, a good...

Album: Ded Hyatt - Glossy

Wednesday, 09 October 2024

This record keeps you guessing. It starts off with “Hybrid Romance”, an ambient piece that’s very pretty but has swooping glassy synths that crack and fracture and could easily be about to break into some super jagged Berlin deconstructed club music...

Album: Miranda Lambert - Postcards From Texas

Friday, 20 September 2024

Miranda Lambert is one of those country stars who’s massive in the States but no-one’s heard of this side of the Atlantic. Famous since her early twenties, she’s had a quarter century career, encompassing seven Top Five US albums, including one...

Album: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Woodland

Saturday, 17 August 2024

Named after the duo’s Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, badly damaged in a 2020 tornado and restored by them, Woodland Studios is Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ first album in four years, when All the Good Times won the Grammy for Best...

Album: AJ Lee & Blue Summit - City of Glass

Thursday, 11 July 2024

In the world of popular music, tangential connections to success are profile-raising. They offer an immediate connection to an artist. It is beholden on me, then, despite not knowing it when I first enjoyed this album, to mention that rising Grammy...

Le nozze di Figaro, Garsington Opera review - fine-tuned telling it as it is

Saturday, 29 June 2024

“Tradition is sloppiness,” Mahler the opera conductor is credited with saying. But in the case of old master John Cox’s long-serving Garsington production of the greatest of operatic comedes, not if it’s refreshed with the subtlest insights in to...

country

Doormat Navigation