Tonight there is a new member in Lambchop’s rhythm section. Along side the bass and drums is a gilded figure of about 8 feet in height. It’s Jesus Christ. We are at St. George’s Church in Kemptown, which, frankly, is a contender for most spectacular venue in the country. It’s quite a setting for Kurt Wagner and co’s classic songwriting. Continue Reading

Ryan Adams has an impressive resume. Four solo albums since 2000, and with his band The Cardinals, another four added on to that total. Many shows played worldwide, multiple Grammy nominations, and respect and reverence from hundreds of thousands of fans. So, prior to listening to ‘Cardinology’, his latest album with The Cardinals, it can be assumed either of two things. A) This album will be the best example of alt-country that you can find, an exhibition of major talent from a majorly talented artist or B) It’ll be very easy to listen to, slightly bland but sure as sugar guaranteed to sell records. And sadly Cardinology should have a big ol’ B stamped on its cover.

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This album is a hard one to review. Oh yes. Not because it’s bad, its brilliant, and I’m so impressed by That’s The Spirit (Ottawan native Ben Wilson, with some help from a few good friends) that to put into words how much i like this album would take up 3 pages and probably only consist of the word ‘incredible’. And that wouldn’t make a good review. When I do try, whenever I get a good point in my head, I automatically forget it because im too lost in the music. This album feels like an album. It isn’t a collection of songs loosely bundled together. It’s a positive cloud of music, something almost tangible. When Staying Places is playing, an atmosphere is created that is ethereal, almost dream-like and at the same time, a focused concentration of well placed instruments and vocal lines. In fact, if I wasn’t woken up slightly by the vintage piano introduction of ‘It’s Curtains For You’ (a track that drifts across your mental horizon halfway through this release, and then leaves after less than two minutes), Staying Places would have me in a trance from start to finish. Continue Reading

As he stood and watched, blinking at the foot of the stairs, he muttered into his dripping beard.

Oh Christ.

From his forehead a mixture of blood and sweat dropped over the floor, mixing with the beer, spit and tobacco. The smell was hideous. In the darkened corner, a carny swayed to and fro, half elated, half scared, blinking in disbelief before spinning into a heap at the foot of the stage. The band continued, working themselves into a frenzy, song after song. Their hearts pounded. Fiddles scrapped, cymbals crashed, banjos plucked and voices screeched. Continue Reading

It wasn’t just tumbleweeds and lizards that were carried across the horizon with Garden Ruin’s stop gap musical experiments. Calexico modernized and in the process loss some of its Tex-Mex charm in pursuit of indie-rock idioms.  Any good meteorologist or (urban) cowboy will tell you that loose soil erosion in one place means a deposit of it in another. Carried to Dust is that other place and the sand it carried is chock full of the choice minerals Calexico fans cherish. Continue Reading

Blackbird Harmony is Texan Ethan Birdsong (great name). Anyone who has George Jones as a MySpace friend is going to be worth a listen, and with influences from Hank Williams to Joy Division is also likely to be viewing a battered world through a whisky glass - drained of liquid but full to the brim with sorrows. And so it is: don’t come looking for a pick-me-up here. Continue Reading

British Country music has been a bit of a weird genre. How can a bunch of kids in the centre of London know how to play country music? Can they “live” country music like their American cousins across the pond? To be honest, up until relatively recently, the thought and sound of British Country had sent shivers down my spine. No one’s really stood out as a banner holder for this burgeoning scene. Especially when it’s compared to what the “real” country guys are making… Fleet Foxes anyone? However, this might all begin to change. Grantura have been playing live for a number of years now and their debut album has been sometime in the making. Can they finally banish the embarrassment of UK Country? Continue Reading

Well, we say Ryan Adams - the new album Cardinology (er…great title there Ry - really inspired) will actually be billed as just Cardinals. Seems like Ryan got his own way this time after last years battle with Lost Highway to have their the Cardinals name featured on Easy Tiger. It ended up not only being released as a Ryan Adams solo LP but with a lonesome looking Adams on the cover. Which, as far as I’m aware, was far removed from what Ryan originally intended for the album. A ‘full band’ affair was the plan.

Anyhoo - Cardinology (seriously, could they not come up with a better title than that?!) gets its release on October 28th via Lost Highway. Shitty title aside, I for one couldn’t be more excited. Tracklisting is as follows:

1. “Fix It”
2. “Magick”
3. “Let Us Down Easy”
4. “Like Yesterday”
5. “Go Easy”
6. “Sink Ships”
7. “Born Into A Light”
8. “Cobwebs”
9. “Crossed Out Name”
10. “Natural Ghost”
11. “Evergreen”
12. “Stop”

In support of the release, Cardinals will be touring the UK in November. I quite fancy the Brixton date myself.

November
10th - Manchester, Academy
11th - Newcastle, Academy
13th - Leeds, Academy
16th - Cambridge, Corn Exchange
17th - Birmingham, Academy
19th - Brighton, Dome
20th - London, Brixton Academy
22nd - Southampton, Guildhall

Visiter is the second album to be released by American psychedelic folksters The Dodos. The duo formed in San Francisco back in 2006 with originally just one member, Meric Long whom toured around the city as a one-man acoustic act going by the name of Dodobird. After studying Western African Ewe drumming Long began to take a strong interest in blues and set out to fuse the two together creating a sound, which revolved around percussion as the centrepiece. He was later introduced to progressive metal drummer Logan Kroeber and soon after The Dodos were born and released their first album in 2006, Beware the Maniacs. Some rigorous touring later and they have now returned with an album, which promises thoughtful lyrical content, a variety of quirky yet well-structured acoustic arrangements, and more importantly some damn good drumming.
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The ‘Red Dirt Girl’ scubbed up pretty well. This photo: Simon Leak

What’s a year without an Emmylou Harris concert? A pretty lousy year I would suggest. But after last October’s joyous visit to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, I had some reservations as to whether this might prove to be an anti-climax. It’s true the open air atmosphere there could not be topped, and I do have a soft spot for the purity of her bluegrass Carolina Star line-up, but the touring band that Emmylou has assembled this year was a revelation. As you might expect for someone with her contacts and stature, they were assuredly gifted and yet had the generous sensibility to complement rather than compete with the most exquisite instrument on show - Emmylou’s peerless voice. With the history of several, shall we say, rumbustuous characters who have contributed to/graduated from Emmylou’s touring academy over the years I’m pretty sure this tough Southern belle could put anyone who happened to step out of line back in their place anyway. Maybe that’s another reason why she still sports cowboy boots beneath the shimmering cream glad rags that sparkled angelically from centre stage. To paraphrase the old standard, the rest of those angels were most definitely rejoicing in heaven last night, if a little further back than the upper balcony (but then they do get in for free don’t they). Continue Reading

Howe Gelb has been in my periphery for a while, but I’ve never bothered myself enough to seek out his music. Then I was given for review proVISIONS, his first Giant Sand album in four years. Now, I’ve experienced my share of “grower” albums over the years, but there are grower albums and then there are albums that slap you upside the head when you least expect it. My first impression of proVISIONS was indifferent at best and completely uninterested at worst. I gave it two or three subsequent listens, but with no more of a positive outcome, I shelved it, planning to give it one more listen closer to release date, bang out a review, and be done with it. The album, however, had other plans as it wormed its way into my subconscious so masterfully that my planned final spin of the album blew me away just a little bit. Continue Reading

The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir have been together for five years now and continue to bash out their mixture of back-of-beyond mountain folk, “gospel for the unbeliever”, and delta blues with the ferocity and abandon of punk rockers, which is exactly what their old inspirational predecessors would have been doing, or course. More (urban) hillbillies high on hooch than Soggy Mountain Boys, it’s a fine tradition to maintain, and I’m happy to add my bit in support. Hailing from Calgary, Canada, their first release was completely DIY but got them noticed and spots at various roots music festivals followed. Since then they have continued to rustle up a storm with raw mix of slide guitar, banjo, harmonica, stand-up bass, and drums, and Judd Palmers dry guttural vocals crying out for attention - if often straining to reach for real impact. Continue Reading

The sixth album from Hawaiian-born singer-songwriter Mason Jennings is a bit of a treat. In The Ever is varied and well-written, a patchwork of solid, well put together songs which together encompass humour, romance and tragedy.

It opens with “Never Knew Your Name” and “Something About Your Love”, which is possibly unwise as they’re the two most straightforward and predictable songs on offer here. They’re satisfying enough, but they’re not a patch on the much stronger and braver tracks Jennings has for us later on the album - luckily we only have to wait until the third track to hear “I Love You And Buddha Too”, a very funny song about Jennings’ view that all world religions are facets of the same thing. “Oh Jesus I love you” Jennings sings, “and I love Buddha too / Rama Krishna Gurudev / Dao Dei Jing and Muhammad”. All this is captured over a jaunty piano line and ever-building percussion. Continue Reading

Now 28, Conor Oberst famously began his recording career at the age of 13. Since those early years, his solo career has taken something of a back seat, with most of his material coming as part of various bands, mostly Bright Eyes, whose last release was the well-received Cassadaga from last year. Taking a break from that band, Oberst travelled down to Mexico and through January and February of this year, recorded this self-titled album of folky country rock. The act of leaving the US and going to Mexico is directly referenced here in “NYC-Gone, Gone”, but forms part of a wider, recurring theme of starting again. “Sausalito”, for example, talks about making a change to living on a houseboat - and on “Moab”, Oberst asserts that “there’s nothing that the road cannot heal”. Specifically, the album was recorded with the so-called “Mystic Valley Band” in the town of Tepoztlán, believed by the Aztecs to have been the birthplace of the deathly feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl. The story goes that when a European explorer unearthed a statue of said god, he found it so horrific that he promptly reburied it - I think we can be sure that history will be kinder to this album, which as it turns out is pretty good. Continue Reading

This release sees Pennsylvanian Jefferson Pepper two thirds of the way through his ambitious 50 song project to try and answer the question “What has happened to my country?” via an examination of American social history as evidenced by the lives of ordinary people. Pepper set about this task after being both inspired by Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States and perplexed by the legal wrangles of Christian fundamentalists to deny the theories of evolution - which all took place in a court near his home town. Pepper is no stranger to going against the majority grain - his 2005 debut Christmas in Fallujah was full of songs calling the bluff of the American dream. Continue Reading

A rushed Monday morning commute was not the most conducive environment to give this album its first airing, but some tracks from Micah P.Hinson’s third and latest are so heart-wrenchingly poignant that I was almost welling up onto another mans shoulder. That’s an indication of the usual cattle crush ride on the tube rather than a little nugget of personal disclosure, but you get the picture.

With a passing resemblance to a young myopic Elvis Costello, the slow rumbling Texan drawl that emerges from Hinson’s wry frame seems to much closer match expectations based upon his unsettled personal history of addiction and mental illness, money problems and vagrancy, a jail term, and a painful back condition that endured during this recording. I suppose I’m a subscriber to the ‘troubled artist’ theory - at least to have had experiences from which to draw creative intensity if not currently facing obstacles; and all that is, as typically for Hinson, evident here. But the album also often hints at a flickering light at the end of the tunnel, and at those points seems to be some kind of cathartic celebration. The biggest source of his salvation must be his new(ish) wife. He actually proposed at the end of a show at London’s Union Chapel late last year, and parts of the album are practically a love letter to his muse. Continue Reading

Langhorne Slim a.k.a. Sean Scolnick is a restless raucous purveyor of acoustic folksy-bluegrass-punk with a larger than life persona seeming to be a mix of the rough cool of Tom Waits, Joe Strummer, and Woody Guthrie - whilst being still a couple of years off thirty. The ‘Langhorne’ moniker refers to his Pennsylvanian place of birth, and his energetic low-fi, almost skiffle, sub-three minute nuggets are often given an intelligent musical twist courtesy of his degree from the Conservatory of Music no less at Purchase College, New York. There’s a bowed double-bass riff that drives ‘Spinning Compass’, a barping trombone on ‘Rebel Side Of Heaven’ and judicious Hammond organ, ragtime piano, and accordion flavouring elsewhere. Only on ‘Hello Sunshine’ does Slim wield an electric guitar, otherwise strumming like a dervish, or like a dervish with an acoustic guitar anyway. His cracked lived-in voice stands out above all the homespun old-time hell-raising and enhances lyrics otherwise not particularly deep with a dusting of world-weary wisdom. Continue Reading

‘Call and Response’ is a storming opening to this album, as appropriate for a lament on exposed social inequality in the wake of hurricane Katrina, and the debut from this Californian Americana seven-piece maintains a self-assured confidence in performance and quality of tune throughout. They have enough members and buckets of twang to get the hoe-down started amongst themselves and for several tracks you’ll be sorely tempted to join in. With two female members, four lead vocalists and everyone else hollering/harmonising as backup when necessary, there’s plenty of variety of vocal delivery, ranging from a Drive By Truckers growl to Gram Parsons plaintive tear jerking. Never as heavy as DBT, their collective performance does bear reference to Whiskeytown, The Band (though inexplicably for an Americana fan, I have always found them particularly tedious apart from a couple of classics), and ‘Death of Me’ is pure Flying Burrito Brothers. My wobbly drunk honky-tonking favourite that one. Even the Soggy Bottom Boys get a shout out with ‘Prayer For The Road’ (or does anyone remember the Boothill Foot Tappers?). Continue Reading